


Angel's Fallacy

by theisraelproject107



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Romance, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theisraelproject107/pseuds/theisraelproject107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel is a priest searching for the truth beyond the myth... and discovers what he was never expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [AR - The Angel's Fallacy](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/133115) by Nijuuni. 



> Disclaimer: "If Bridget had a child she'd lose it," he guffawed. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jones. Bridget, why can't you get all done up on Saturdays like your mum?" That's me. If I had the rights to KH, I'd lose them. Quite possibly in my overstuffed wardrobe. Um, and uh, standard disclaimer for Bridget Jones' Diary, too, I guess XD;;
> 
> A/N: This story is dedicated to Erin, aka Nijuuni, both for being a goddess-like muse beyond compare, and the slightly more mortal achievement of managing to twin-hit my Da 20,000 invisible kiriban ;) She is an endless source of exciting inspiration for me, and I always dread each new art piece from her, for fear that my mind will yet again be derailed by its awesomeness XP I do so try to be a good girl, faithful to the one story, but alas, she tempts me away, wicked seductress ;) So this one's for her :heart: It is based on her wonderful picture of the same title – once again, if you have not seen it yet, go DO so. You have been officially implored.
> 
> Final word of warning: I haven't got a religious bone in my body, so most of this was guesswork, What TV Has Taught Me, a quick crash-course in Brother/Father terminology by my Sarah, and what I picked up from Brother Odd by Dean Koontz 8D EN-JOY!

**_Angel's Fallacy_ **

\--

\--

CHAPTER ONE

Sunlight's first rays flowed softly through dawn's mist, illuminating the drifting dew like miniature stars, white nebulae hovering thickly above the earth. Night was done with; new days were beginning for life all throughout the planet, bringing fresh hopes, shining dreams, tarnished frustrations.

One man's black boots moved with short, swift steps through the still haze, barely managing to disturb its quiet existence above the green, frost-bitten grass that crunched audibly beneath his soles. His robes whispered as he walked, shades of black, white and purple, a sizeable wooden cross bumping against his sternum, a leather-bound book clutched between long-fingered hands.

Vivid green eyes rose briefly as he approached a large stone edifice of sweeping arches and precise walkways, deep shadows lingering under its broad awnings. The sound of his steps changed as he passed from natural earth to man-hewn stone, the man reaching one hand up to gently bump free the droplets that had gathered on the long red spikes of his hair. Each pace echoed in this more enclosed space, the noise running ahead of him like a ghost child, down the corridor flanking the building's perimeter.

After several quiet minutes, with the sun's influence spreading further over his sphere of existence, the redhead turned a corner and pushed through a heavy door, swallowed instantly by gloom. He paused, allowing his gaze to adjust to the massive, dark interior, small, slitted windows and distant, dull lanterns hanging in rusted brackets providing little light to illuminate it. Drawing the book up against his chest, he shook off the chill of the outdoors, green eyes beginning to move slowly across his surroundings.

Gradually, the enormous room became clearer, corners and edges and browns and blacks, chairs and tables and stacks filled with books upon scrolls upon volumes upon tomes. The air was like glass – frozen, timeless, almost fragile with the weight of the years it had witnessed and absorbed. Every time he entered this place, it felt like he was shifting aside an ancient, untouched veil, stepping into the dusty past.

Straightening himself to be more presentable, he set off into the dimness, keeping a lookout for a familiar head as he moved through the huge library. Soles producing a clipped sound, he glanced along each aisle that passed, entering and exiting warm pools of lantern-light, knowing better than to call out to the almost ever-present keeper of the books – his chances at civil discussion would be greatly hindered if he startled the man out of another reverie of concentration.

And yet, he somehow had a talent for it.

His progress was stopped cold by a nearby stack of books coldly criticising, "You walk as if you were tramping through snow in a blizzard, Father Axel."

The redhead blinked, shifting closer, peering over the top of what he had taken to be a table entirely covered in various foot-thick volumes, and indeed, he wasn't entirely wrong in the assumption; the only clear space had been promptly filled with an open book, its diminutive reader sitting close on a short-backed chair. The book-keeping monk hadn't even bothered to raise his head while levelling the complaint, his single visible eye remaining trained on the dusty tome between his elbows.

Clearing his throat, the noise like a gunshot in the silence, making the man with the glossy, steel-blue hair flinch while glaring down at the pages, Axel lifted the book in his hands and announced, "I've finished the reading you gave me, Brother Zexion."

"Congratulations," the short man replied with terse ill-temper. "The festivities master shall be alerted."

The red-haired priest shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hesitating before venturing, cautious of the other man's temper, "I would like another, please."

At this, the Brother finally snapped up his gaze, eye narrow. Realising that he still clutched the leather-bound book, Axel hastily placed it down atop one of the piles adorning the desk, assuring, "I'll return this one first, of course."

Zexion grimaced, rolled his eyes, echoed, "Of course," in an unimpressed tone and stood, removing it from the stack and carrying it away to a different section of the library. Axel quickly followed, saying enthusiastically, "I found the ideas that Riku presented on the topic of afterlife to be fascinating, if somewhat biased. It's easy to tell he was still freshly redeemed in that volume, and speaks of his encounter with the reaper with a reverence bordering on impropriety."

Brother Zexion grunted, turning down an aisle and grasping a sliding ladder leaned against the bookshelf, dragging it on its small wheels along with him. "The reaper angel Sora is said to inspire such emotions. And who can tell what hidden allures death holds for one who drifted as far into darkness as that prophet? It is not so strange for a man to be enthralled by his saviour, even if that saviour happens to be God's darker hand in guiding mankind into ashes." He stopped the ladder, steadied it, and began to deftly climb one-handed, holding the book securely against his robes.

Axel made an impatient motion, gripping the lower rung to hold it in place as the man reached the high shelves. "Well, whatever his motivation, you were right in recommending it, Brother – it was  _filled_ with reaper information, and so clear it felt at times as if  _I_ were the one encountering Sora."

"Imagine that," said Zexion archly, gaze scanning the faded spines all lined up before espying the slot in which Axel's book belonged, sliding it carefully in. "And you want more, do you?"

"Please," responded the redhead instantly. "The subject is too fascinating to let go of."

Zexion grunted, grasping the ladder's rungs with both hands now and reversing back down. "You'd do better to spend your time and intelligence on greater projects than this, Father. Have you even tended to your duties today?"

As his boots touched once more on the ground, Axel spread his hands in protest, objecting, "Dawn only just broke! The day has barely begun!"

"And yet, here you are," the man responded, his dry voice falling flat on the still air, "a young priest of considerable vigour preparing to waste away within the pages of some volume or another, chasing the fancies of ages long past..."

"I'm sorry, Brother," Axel interrupted, matching the book-keeper's wry tone perfectly, "but I forget if you were talking about me, or yourself."

Zexion harrumphed like some kind of wizened creature three times his age. "I am a scholar. My work and duties belong within the pages of more books than you will ever absorb in your entire lifetime, no matter how passionate on a subject you may become. Besides," he sniffed, "I was a weak child; one could never consider me as being 'vigorous'."

Rolling his eyes skyward, Axel insisted, as they resumed walking down the long aisle, "Nevertheless, as you said, I  _am_ passionate on this particular topic. My mind has been captured, Zexion, and I intend to satisfy it for as long as it hungers."

"Lusts of the head?" Zexion muttered distractedly, gaze sweeping the many books, his hands behind his back. He paused, turning to the redhead with a slight smirk. "Surely there is something in the scriptures that forbids such a thing. Careful, Father – making such heated statements around the wrong colleague could have you scrubbing floors whilst singing hymns on the Lord's purity for a week."

Axel mimed a shudder. "May I be protected from such a fate."

"And the rest of us, as well." Zexion was amused now, his previous grouchy coolness warmed by the presence of one as hot-blooded as Axel ever was. "Fetch me the ladder, I have a book that may interest you."

Eagerness springing to life in his handsome features, Axel hurried to obey, vestments swishing out behind him in his haste. The sound of the wheels squeaking across the hard floor briefly filled the high ceiling with bouncing echoes as he dragged it swiftly to the waiting man. No sooner had it stopped than had Zexion begun his ascent, mind focused entirely now on locating whichever volume had entered his skull, eyes reflecting the same hunger of which his red-haired Brother had spoken. He could attempt to sound superior, but if lust of the mind for knowledge had truly been punishable, he himself would have been among the very first to be on his knees in the Grand Hall, scrubbing brush firmly in hand. As Axel stood with his hands clasped hopefully below, the self-proclaimed scholar began hunting with keen vision for his quarry.

"Aha!" He slowly inserted a finger between the many spines, gently tugging out a painfully slender, journal-sized book, its green cover dull with age. Axel's face dropped as he caught sight of it.

"Is that all?"

Sending him a sharp, outraged glance, Zexion bit off, "If this book held the explanation to the meaning of life, you wouldn't say 'Is that all?' at its mere  _size."_ He scaled down again, facing the chastised man like a mother hen protecting her chicks.  _"Size_ is not what concerns a  _true_ scholar; it is what the text  _contains_ that is vital!"

"I do believe," murmured Axel, reaching over to pluck the book from his hand, "that I have heard the labourers in the towns say similar things to their wives – only in a somewhat different context, I'll admit, unless euphemisms are being employed." As Zexion began to splutter and blush and fume, the redhead turned away, flipping the book open, perusing its contents as he headed back out towards the more open space.

"Axel, you are  _incorrigible,"_ the pale-haired scholar finally managed to choke out, at which the priest hid a pleased smirk, fingers already splitting the intangible-seeming book in two, bright green gaze darting briefly over keywords in search of what made it worthy of such regard. He flicked backwards through its pages, while behind him, Zexion pulled the ladder back to the aisle's end for ready later use. Still sceptical as to how such sparse reading matter, no more than two hundred brittle pages, could be terribly informative on the subject his heart most desired, it wasn't until he reached the front of the book that his critical eye was abruptly stumbled, brows rising slowly as he read.

"Do be careful with that, Father," Zexion grumbled as he brushed past with small, light steps. "It is an extremely old text. I can't say that it is valued in terms of its content by the world at large, but all documents must be shown the proper respect."

Axel was barely listening, had heard maybe only a word or two of the book-keeper's warning. He moved to automatically follow the man as Zexion aimed back towards the more brightly lit corner of the enormous cavern of a room, the book-smothered perch he had inhabited before the redhead had come trudging through.

"Zexion," he rasped, eyes wide. "Zexion, listen to this. You must listen." Placing a finger upon the very first page, Axel traced it carefully along the lines of writing, breathlessly reciting:

" _The world is divided, a landscape of both beauty and beast. As Angels, we must only walk the steps of those born of sacred hearts. We must stray from the style of the wicked._  
_Reapers are the fading and the forgotten, damned to walk the earth and feared upon by the eyes of the living, damned to harvest life, hearts--all without remorse, and damned to remain as empty souls void of love and compassion with no other possession than a wicked skull.  
We are not Reapers. We are Angels. We are the saints to lead the future to the Doors to Light, and so must seek guidance from our beloved, wise priests, and the scripts of the Words of Angels.  
Priests are blessed with a forgiving nature, with strength to resist the darkest seduction, and with wisdom to nurture the gift named Purity. Priests are courageous, with the bestowed task of lighting the path to divinity with the Cross chained to the heart.  
Never will the two worlds twine as one.  
Never will the 'hearts' of Reapers be granted the gift of love.  
_ Love will never come to those who have sinned.  
_Thus saith the Angels."_

There was a pause as the redhead finally broke off, looking expectantly at his companion in faith, eyes shining by the nearby lantern's glow.

"Indeed," remarked Zexion with disinterest, taking his previous seat. "You see now why one shouldn't discount based on size, yes?"

Stunned by his lack of reaction, Axel swooped around to the side of the desk, elbows dropping onto the cover of a book as he exclaimed, "But don't you see what this  _means,_ Brother?"

"Get your bony elbows off my books," came the curt command, the redhead complying without thought, continuing eagerly as if uninterrupted, "These are words from the angels  _themselves!_ Straight from their glorious mouths,  _'so saith the Angels' –_ don't you find it incredible?!"

"Incredible, yes," Zexion responded dryly, smoothing delicate hands down his front in a compulsively neat motion. "It was written by man, Father – angels do not scribe from the heavens and leave their words where we might conveniently stumble upon them."

"But they must communicate with man in the first place," Axel argued stubbornly, "in order to have their words recorded. Is that not the basis of the Holy Book?"

"There is a difference," Zexion sniffed piously, "between the Word of God and the supposed scriptures of the angels' policy on death reapers. I myself consider the topic little more than fiction, Father, and would advise you to do the same." Axel frowned deeply at him, eyes narrowing slightly. He eased the book shut, averting his gaze as the other man glanced over. "Now – you have new reading material to partake in. May I finally be left to continue my  _real_ research?"

Without waiting for the redhead's assent, Zexion turned his attention back to the pages of the large book on the table, more than content to melt back into the stillness and silence that clung to every surface of the library like knowledge into the crags of the brain. However, concentration was not the easiest thing to come by when one was haunted by a tall, doleful, spike-haired shadow falling over one's visible light.

At length, Zexion sighed, laying down his pen and drying its tip, squinting up at Axel's lingering form. "Father." His patience was sounding deliberate and thin. "Is there perhaps any other matter in which I can aid you?"

Axel hesitated, as if unsure, but Zexion waited, resignedly conscious of more on the redhead's tongue than had already been voiced. Truth be told, now that he had noticed it, he wondered how it was that he had not earlier. It had been present all along, a near-agitated energy in the tall priest, a restlessness that had been rare in him since his inauguration three years previously into the monastery's brotherhood. Zexion recalled that while Axel been a probationary member of the cloister, he had often worn this same air – this sense of need hanging about him. At the time, his 'passion' had been his powerful desire to serve God from within their ranks; and now?

Axel wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, eyes darting about for a moment before he made a concerted effort to calm himself, meeting the monk's visible eye determinedly and taking a breath. "Brother Zexion, I – I have been thinking. I wish… to catch one."

For a long, quiet moment, Zexion stared up at him, chin resting on laced fingers. "…One what?" he eventually asked blankly, realising suddenly that no elaboration was forthcoming. Axel looked to be losing his nerve, but had obviously made some decision long before returning his last book.

"A reaper angel."

Axel was briefly treated to the rare sight of both of the man's clear eyes as Zexion slid a hand under the obscuring swathe of fringe and lifted, to better see the redhead, to better blink at him with incredulity, to better tell if this was the priest's idea of a joke on the abbey's reclusive scholar, or if some seed of madness truly existed within his mind. Upon seeing the newly firm, serious set to his features, Zexion gazed at him a moment longer, before letting the gunmetal curtain fall back into place while giving a loud, rude snort. "One doesn't catch angels as if they were butterflies. Restrain your foolishness to mere fascination, nothing more. Go no further, Axel." Dismissively, he once again lowered his focus to the open text before him.

"All right, I worded it incorrectly," Axel persisted, frustrated. "Not so much catch and cage like a common bird, but – seek out. Find.  _Encounter."_ His eyes grew distant, fervour sparkling in their depths. "If I, like the prophet Riku, could actually be face to face with the reaper Sora…"

Zexion expelled a slow breath, rubbing slender fingers through his hair in a fortifying motion. He inhaled, ticked his hard gaze up at the redhead. "Are we really to have this conversation?" he demanded, sounding tired. He closed his eyes briefly, steepling his fingertips together. "Father Axel. Your imagination runs away with you. You seem to be entertaining some peculiar notions as to the availability of angels to the common mortal." His eyes flashed open again, a reproving stare in place. "To be a man of God does not grant you any special privileges over the next man. We do not commune with the heavens, Father, we are merely extended mouthpieces of the Lord's holy Word." He leaned forward sharply, cutting off whatever protest the redhead had been forming, continuing in low tones, "You desire a reaper? Cast such unclean thoughts from your mind. To find Death, one must  _stalk_ death. Such practices are unhealthy, and, moreover, unholy."

He straightened gradually, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the man's green irises, until Axel finally glanced away. Grimly, Zexion nodded. "Very well, then. If there's nothing more to discuss –" and his tone assured Axel in no uncertain terms that there  _wasn't –_ "I would like to be left to my studies now, if you'd be so kind as to show yourself quietly out."

Axel stood in silence for a minute, as Zexion promptly ignored him, this time remaining that way, refusing to acknowledge or enable the redhead any further than he already had done. A small sigh worked its way from Axel's lungs, hands wrapping around the new book. His voice echoing softly in the thick silence, he said, "Thank you, Brother."

Zexion did not look up. Grimacing faintly, Axel turned and did as bidden, steps much duller than they had been upon arrival, slower. He retraced his earlier path, back to the door, wrapped a hand around the handle, and with one disappointed look over his shoulder at the library's tall shelves, Zexion's point of light invisible from this angle, he pulled it open and exited back out into the cold.

As it slid shut behind him, its considerable weight tugging at the hinges, Axel turned his eyes down to the faded green cover clasped between fingers that were white at the knuckles. He hesitated, a frown tugging at his features as the scholarly monk's words ran through his mind, bitterness touching his mood. He flipped the book back open, sliding through its pages, attempting to find some element of the fiction that Zexion had mentioned, only to end up once again at the very beginning, fingers smoothing slowly down the aged, flowing text. He touched the start of each sentence, taking in the ornate lettering, the sobriety of the words, the formality.  _'So saith the angels.'_ How could something concerning so sombre a subject sound all so beautiful inside his head?

More than that – how could something this clear and powerful be anything but truth? Its tone was so completely different to the writings of any of the prophets or religious researchers that he had come across in the monastery's extensive library. And Axel… he wanted  _more._ That thrilling taste of shock he'd got when he'd first read the opening to this book, all it had done was confirm his overwhelming desire to be like so few before him and be  _touched_ by one of these enigmatic divinities. To experience it from more than a scholar's seat. But – Zexion's reaction…

' _To find Death, one must_ stalk  _death.'_

As a priest of the monastery, Axel had seen his share of deaths in the last three years, had spoken many a prayer over many a dull casket, had cleared the conscience of the people in the various far-flung towns when they had lingered on their death beds… Death, he had discovered, was a woeful thing. It caused pain wherever it went, whether to the victims or their families. The thought of hunting such an abstract, tormented creation, perhaps right to the grave's edge – it gave, as Brother Zexion had warned, a crawling feeling of impurity. No matter that the act of dying led to eternal peace in the Lord's arms – the fact remained that while the body still breathed, death was an enemy to be feared.

Yet, while he understood this perfectly, Axel could not extend such fears to the ushers that came at breath's end. They were, after all, the very bridging force between the body and the afterlife, if all the various accounts were to be believed. And, try as Zexion might to convince him otherwise… Axel did believe. He couldn't not, after all that he'd read on the matter.

Besides which… by now, he had sat at enough bedsides, Holy Book clasped in hand – too many, with last year's vicious and most virulent case of smallpox claiming one after another of the surrounding towns' populations. He had borne witness to that final moment on numerous occasions, for both young and old alike, and… well, perhaps it  _was_ somewhat morbid in a particular context, but Axel's fascination with the death reapers was innocent enough. He had merely come to wonder: when a soul's time within its body has come to a close, did the good and righteous automatically know their way to God's grace?

The superstitious had countless tales of ghostly apparitions still walking the planet – were these, then, those who did not know their way, neither to Heaven nor even to Hell? If that was indeed the case, then what was it that these souls had lacked, upon their demise, that so many others did not?

He had once posed such a question to the most learned priest he had access to, and Brother Zexion, in all his folly, had referred the curious redhead on to the religious myth of angels of death, harbingers of Heaven's call to the weary.

From then on, Axel had been a slave to it. Every text was richer and more fascinating than the last, compounding again and again his growing certainty that these reapers were actually  _real._ It was only a logical progression that he should graduate from reading the accounts of those who claimed to have met a reaper to wanting to  _be_ one of them. Imagine, actually encountering an angel! It would be enough to fuel his faith for millennia to come. He would be in an eternal bliss, the most peaceful man on God's earth, never to have a crisis of questioning His divine presence like he'd know several others to go through at some point or another, because he would have  _proof._

He did not, of course,  _need_ proof in order to love and believe in God – but the thought of coming into contact with one of His celestial servants was enough to make him almost ill with anticipated euphoria.

But now… he had finally admitted his aspiration to his fellow clergyman, the very one who had first introduced him to it all, and Zexion had virtually named his thoughts as heresy. He had thought the man would support him, honestly, would have a similar interest, would at least see the fascination from an intellectual point of view and encourage the search for gratification… but now, Axel felt confusion. There was nothing unclean about his desires, yet in a few short sentences, Zexion had stripped his idea of all its purity and instead labelled it a dangerous, despicable path to pursue. This had  _never_ been his intention, not for a moment. He just – he merely  _wanted…_

His gaze drew slowly into focus on the pages in front of him, brooding reverie dispelling enough for him to yet again absorb their content. Standing in the growing sunlight, he hopelessly felt a thrill of anticipation at the sober text.

_We are not Reapers. We are Angels._

This, then, was an account of reapers from the angels' point of view – and a harsh one, it appeared. All this talk of wicked skulls, empty souls… one would think that the angels didn't favour the reapers, didn't regard them as cousins in Heaven the way they seemed to Axel's mind. To him, there had never been any great distinction between them – all were in God's great service, were they not? However, now that the excitement of finding a text written as if by the angels themselves was settling down, he was realising that it was all quite… defamatory of reapers. But still, he couldn't help but think of the prophet Riku's writings, his fervour, his undying gratitude and, dare it be said,  _love,_ towards the reaper Sora. Whether it was proper or not, the man had felt passionately enough to dedicate his life to chronicling his experiences. Axel had felt the vibration of his emotions through those writings, and longed,  _longed_ to know them himself. It wasn't enough to merely read, it wasn't enough to wonder; he yearned so strongly to encounter, and create his  _own_ chronicles, even if he wasn'ta natural scholar like Zexion. It gnawed at him, this feeling, and left him feeling lost that he had been so coolly dismissed by the one person he'd thought could appreciate and share such ideas.

Gradually, the sound of echoing footsteps drew him back out of himself, Axel's bright head lifting, the frown remaining on his brow as another of the monastery's inhabitants appeared around the corner. Long blond hair drifting around his elbows, the man noticed Axel, inclined his head in greeting, Axel deferring to him respectfully as he neared, "Father Vexen, good morning."

"And to you," said the older man in his thin tone. "Is Zexion still awake and working?"

Nodding, Axel answered, "I've just been… discussing research with him. He is in the far corner."

"Very good." Glancing down at the book in the redhead's hands, Vexen commanded, "Put that somewhere safe and fulfil your duties before morning prayers, Father. You have barely an hour before the bell tolls." Without waiting for a response, he pulled the library's heavy door open and vanished inside, no doubt a great deal more welcome than Axel had been.

Grimacing, the redhead clapped the still-open book sharply shut with a dry noise, then glanced down at it apologetically. If Zexion had seen, he would have scowled; it wasn't the book's fault that things weren't going according to plan. Sighing, Axel tucked it against his front protectively, casting a last, long look at his surroundings, drinking in the bright light before he had to return indoors for duties, prayers, and then the morning meal. What he wouldn't have given to find some comfortable, warm perch to sit and begin to process the fine details of the slender volume for the rest of the day, ignoring any and all else that was required of him, concentrating only on the melodic flow of old language in his head…

But such was not the privilege of a priest. He had more to attend to than his own personal desires, he had made vows to that effect three years previously, and would not regret them now simply over a whimsy of heart.

Still, though. He wished. He wished… for several things, in that moment.

In time, he would come to wish for more.

\--

\--

Two weeks passed, and Axel held onto the book. He studied each page carefully by night, candle fluttering nearby as he struggled to absorb the depth of the words contained within the text. Zexion had been correct; its mere size had nothing to do with its content, which at times he found difficult to understand. The language could be complicated, and finicky, frustrating at times for someone accustomed to approaching the world in a direct manner. Determined to miss no part of it, however, he persevered. As days went by, he developed dark smudges under his eyes, misplaced sleep and knowledge gained, ideas placed within his head, building conviction beginning to replace the need for slumber. He could feel it tingling at his fingertips, every time he touched the pages. Hard to comprehend, yes; but only because there was so much  _to_ comprehend.

He doubted that Zexion had realised precisely what it was that he was handing to Axel, the moment that the cover had passed from the hands of one man to the other. If he had, he possibly wouldn't have given it over. Perhaps he was underestimating Axel's resolve. Or underestimating the book, maybe, as a mere work of fiction, little realising that... the more that Axel read, the more he was convinced that this was no mere fancy of man. Perhaps it  _had_ been written by man's hands, because of  _course_ angels didn't just leave texts lying around… but like a spirit of inspiration, perhaps one of them had visited the unknown author, guided his thoughts and words, helped to create something which would someday be destined to reach the eyes of one such man who would use it to further his knowledge, use it to… find out more about the elusive reapers.

It was less subjective than the prophet Riku's writings, less passionate, yet did nothing but fuel Axel's inner burn for … he knew that once he finished this one and returned it, Zexion would be reluctant to give him any further readings. He'd misjudged the man's receptivity, and feared that it would result in the book-keeper being conveniently unable to find any other volumes on the matter. He'd had a while to think it over now, and would either have decided Axel to be a deluded fool or a madman, he was sure. The power of his emotion – Zexion had been able to sense it, he had been too obvious. The monk would attempt to steer him away from the path of the reapers, allow the feeling to dull within the redhead, until he returned to being the same man he ever had been, without such an odd passion. He did not want that to happen; Axel didn't want to lose this. But after hearing such discouraging remarks about it, he didn't know how to go forward. He didn't know how to… not blaspheme God in the process of pursuing his desires. Perhaps Zexion had been right about this sort of thing being forbidden; this need, it was as powerful as any longing of the flesh. Was it a lack of discipline? Should he have been praying that the urge be taken, and its presence within him forgiven, like some sinful lust? He didn't know the next step to take.

Then came an afternoon, during this faltering of his confidence, in which he found himself down in one of the nearby towns, the hem of his robes swishing around his ankles as he led the monastery's latest novice around the marketplace. The air was cold, containing a sharp bite, while a morning's heavy rain had turned the world to sludge. Despite this, the marketplace bustled with bodies and livestock, loud voices piercing the air, wares being haggled and exchanged, children and animals darting in and out of the forest of legs that hurried back and forth.

Axel navigated the throng with ease, his height, along with his distinctive head of hair, increasing his visibility, the market-goers respectfully making room for the smiling priest and the blond novice lugging packages at his side. He listened to the huffing and puffing of his rapidly exhausted companion with some sympathy, but, even more, with amusement – he still remembered clearly the woes of being the Brothers' lapdog, and had no qualms in passing the favour on. They liked to call it 'character building' up at the monastery, and it seemed as if this boy needed a reasonable amount of it if he was going to be strong enough to undergo a lifetime of service to God. He was bright enough, certainly, and dedicated, earnest – but, sadly…

A pained expression twitching his bland, ever-present smile, Axel extricated his right hand from within his left sleeve, where he'd had it stored for warmth, and brought it around in a stinging clip to the back of the acolyte's head. "Demyx," he advised pleasantly through his teeth, "stop looking."

The blond, whining out a protest, twisted back from where he'd turned almost completely around to stare at one of the passing townspeople – as he had been doing absolutely every time anyone halfway attractive came along. He was threatening to give Axel a nervous twitch. This was the first time he'd been out and about with the novice, and he was half-convinced that eventually somebody was going to turn to the blond and punch him in the face for such blatant ogling of their daughters. Demyx, however, didn't quite seem to grasp this.

"It's only  _looking,_  though, there's no harm," he complained, on this particular occasion. Face brightening, the boy added, "He was cute."

" _Are you talking about a man?"_ Axel's hand came around again in a castigating blow, eyes squeezing shut, Demyx yelping in response.

"Ow! He just looked like Brother Zexion, that's all…"

 _Smack._ Axel's eyes leapt open, arm moving all of its own accord for a third time, barely pausing from the second, words grating out with half a disbelieving laugh haunting their depths, "You honestly have a death wish, don't you?"

Unhappily mumbling, the acolyte seemed to finally sensed his cue to fall silent and keep his eyes frontward, but not before having allowed the taller man the opportunity to bring 'death' into the conversation, however lightly mentioned it may have been.

These days, anything to do with death – any connection whatsoever – triggered the longing within Axel to know more about reapers. The two were synonymous.

To be honest, that death in any form should make him feel this yearning… he couldn't deny that it disturbed him ever so slightly. This was precisely this sort of thing that led to his doubting himself – yet it wasn't enough to put him off the subject. He was forced to hang in this crawling limbo, discomfort and need co-existing, until he managed to decide for once and for all which direction to choose. Sense, of course, dictated that this was little more than a hobby which had caught his imagination and thus sprawled out of hand – but then, sense had a voice remarkably similar to Zexion's within his skull. Of course, he understood that this had begun with mere interest and unravelled from there into what it now was… but what  _was_ it, exactly? Obsession? Fixation, fascination? Healthy, unhealthy, understandable or alien? He was in too subjective a position to be able to accurately decide, but knew now that objectivity lacked the understanding or compassion necessary to make a fair judgement.

Walking along the road with his hands back in his sleeves, the sun shining down from within its nest within the clouds, noisy activity all over the place… it was hard to imagine what the right outcome could be. Axel sighed, fearing that he'd never be able to find a definitive answer. With a glimmer of misdirected frustration, he noticed Demyx once again twisted in place, an unconscious step taken to the side, towards whoever it was he was staring at this time. Honestly, one would imagine the boy had been  _raised_ in a monastery, never mind becoming a novice at age seventeen. Axel lowered his chin, let out a sharp breath, and with a grimace prepared to twist the boy's ear until he  _squealed_  his promises of chastity, only to realise that in that  _brief_ moment of collection, the blond had begun to actually walk away.

Beginnings of genuine anger fluttering to life in his chest, Axel turned his head to deliver a sharp reprimand, only to let out an outraged exclamation as Demyx completely dropped his armful of packages, their brown paper outsides splattering directly into a muddy puddle, scattering messily. Ignoring his superior, Demyx took off at a half-run, but even as Axel's shocked gaze took in the sight of the ruined parcels, the urgency of the blond's motions had already touched his mind. He followed for several steps, unsurely at first, before spotting what the painfully observant boy had already long-noticed – an old man, across the marketplace, collapsed and gripping his chest, a young boy screaming at his side.

In the next heartbeat, Axel was running after the acolyte, packages forgotten, pushing and weaving through the market crowd. Reaching the quickly growing circle of onlookers, he forced his way through, a ripple passing through the townspeople as they realised the priest in their midst. A new respect entered the proceedings; the ring grew broader, bemused alarm turning to concern within the surrounding faces as Axel took to the damp ground beside where Demyx was already gathering the fallen man in his arms, attempting to prop him up against his knees. "Water!" the blond called anxiously to the crowd. "Somebody, get him some water!"

Turning to the nearest townsperson, Axel barked, "Find a physician!" Focusing his attention on the sufferer, he gripped the old man's chin, twisting his heavy head to face him, taking in the slack quality of his skin with a sinking sensation of dread. "Whose child is that?" he demanded, of the now sobbing youngster who struggled as a young woman in pink held him back.

"He belongs to Sir Jecht up in the manor, Father," she informed him desperately, bent double in an attempt to cling to the wildly thrashing blond child, who burst out, _"Grandpa!"_ and then dissolved into loud weeping. Over his wailing, she continued, "Their family physician is Doctor Yen-Sid, he may be able to…"

"Fine," Axel cut her off, already standing, gesturing with his head for Demyx to follow suit. Looking distressed, the blond did as bidden, and the two of them hauled the old man up into their arms. "Please, lead the way to the manor." With the aid of one of the townsmen, they managed to carry the lead-heavy body uphill, out of the marketplace, tracking sodden mud across cobblestones. The woman, carrying the young boy who continued to cry quietly into her shoulder, quickly led the way, casting green-eyed glances of concern back at them every now and then as they struggled along with the man's bulk like a sack of potatoes between them.

The journey was not a lengthy one, the manor apparently the only one of its kind, located impressively in the very centre of the town across the main square, a tall, solid structure boxed in by a high brick wall. As they hurried down the front path, the door was opened by a confused-looking teenage girl in a yellow uniform, the woman with the braid rapidly calling, "Selphie, go and tell Doctor Yen-Sid that Sir Jecht's father has taken ill. Be quick!" The girl quickly leapt out to meet them, ushering them inside with suddenly frantic politeness before dashing off without a word, hair bobbing as she disappeared around the corner of the wall. "My name is Aerith Gainsborough," the woman threw over her shoulder at the men, "I bring flowers to the housekeeper daily, I know the family."

"Thank you for guiding us, Miss Gainsborough," Axel grunted as she led them to a dark-wood staircase.

"Not at all, Father," she worriedly replied, before ascending as lightly as a delicate woman could when holding a half-grown boy hanging in her arms. She glanced downwards as another of the manor's servants appeared, calling, "Vaan! Please go inform your master that his father is ill, and that the physician is on his way." Instantly picking up on the gravity of the situation, taking in the sight of the three men carrying the fourth, the slight boy with the pale hair vanished quickly back into the heart of the house. Aerith took them along a narrow hallway, then suddenly stopped and opened one of the many doors, urging them inside.

Axel found himself in a small, brightly-lit room, the fresh scent of what could only be the woman's own flowers filling the air from a vase over on the mantelpiece. "This way, lay him down carefully." Vexed, she stepped out of the way as they approached the cleanly-made bed and unburdened themselves. The third man, silent so far, went to draw the curtains, plunging the room into cool dimness. Gratefully, Aerith sighed, "Leon, thank you."

The taciturn male nodded curtly. "I'll be out of your way, then. I hope he recovers." The way he said it suggested to Axel that his expectations were far lower than his hopes, much in the same way that his own were. Both had seen the waxen pallor of the old man's flesh, and drawn their own conclusions as to how this day would end for one of the town's inhabitants. "Hand me the boy," the brunet added, "I'll leave him with the housekeeper."

Distractedly, Aerith unslung the blond from her chest, settling him on his feet and cutting him off before he could renew his tears by saying, "I hear Mrs. Potts has been baking, Tidus – you must go and stay with her, and taste what she has made. Doctor Yen-Sid will take care of your grandpa. You go on with Mister Leonhart now."

There was some sniffling, but the thought of food had done it – the men sent each other respectful nods of acknowledgement, then Leonhart took the boy's hand and escorted him back out into the hallway, pushing the door to rest against its frame. A new hush falling through the room, Axel stepped forward, offering, "Please, allow us to make him more comfortable."

"Oh, thank you," the woman sighed. "You're too kind, Father, and your companion as well." Demyx flushed at being mentioned, and followed the redhead quietly, Aerith shifting to support the old man's head as the two of them carefully pulled the blankets and sheets out from under him and repositioned them back on top. Tucking in the corners with the utilitarian efficiency taught by life at the monastery, Axel had him secured and warm within moments, a hand going up to feel his wrinkled brow. He frowned. "Hmm. Fever," he muttered.

Her hands clasped at her chest, Aerith let out a resigned breath. "He has a weak heart. He's a good man, his grandson is very fond of him. I wish it hadn't happened in front of him…"

"Children are resilient, Miss Gainsborough," Axel softly responded, then straightened, exhaling slowly as he returned his hands into his wide sleeves. "Is the doctor far?"

"No, no, in fact –"

"I live very nearby, Father Axel," a gruff voice announced from the doorway, startling the three of them, Demyx instinctively clutching the redhead's arm. Drawing himself taller, Axel frowned at the slightly bent, wizened-looking, sharp-eyed man that entered the room, clutching a large bag. His stare was piercing, absorbing the sight of the two clerics as he shuffled slowly towards the bed. "It's lucky that this happened when it did. Young Miss Selphie found me just as I was returning from my morning rounds, and it looks like all promptness is going to be required… although I was not aware that you inhabitants of the hill-top monastery were now also performing medical services."

"Forgive me," Axel said stiffly, "but you appear to be aware of who I am without my being able to return the favour."

"You have a reputation, Father. Your hair precedes you." As the priest blinked at this, the man added, "I am Yen-Sid, a physician in town. I will see what can be done for Sir Jecht's father, but I must request that you wait in the hall. You as well, Miss Gainsborough, I have no need of a hovering nurse. You must surely have other duties to tend to today, without adding a bedsit to them. The priest will stay, but only because clergy are meddlesome creatures." He placed down his bag on top of the bed, unclipping it and opening it up, ignoring the three of them now with caveat in place.

Aerith hesitated, but turned as bidden and followed Axel and Demyx out into the hall, where the girl in the yellow dress was already setting up two chairs. She glanced up as they appeared, a crease between her brows and a curtsey in her knees as she gestured to the straight-backed seats. "Yen-Sid said that you can wait here, um, Fathers…"

"Oh, it's fine, I'm not a priest yet," Demyx told her, managing to turn the simplest statement into the most shameless flirtation and causing the girl to go pink in the cheeks. Restraining himself, barely – the circumstances, for goodness' sake! – Axel gripped the blond's sleeve and yanked him close as he sat, saying grimly, "Thank you, child, we are most grateful."

The girl bobbed once more in respect and returned to her household chores, flipped-up hairstyle disappearing back down the stairs. Once she was gone, Axel sent the blond a glare, beckoning him down close with a finger. Swallowing, Demyx did as he was told, Axel looking as if he were about to hiss abuse into his ear – only to have his head, for the fourth time in a single half-hour period, soundly whacked with the broad of the priest's hand. Straightening the finger that had coaxed him near, Axel pointed hard at his face and muttered, "You will go with Miss Gainsborough and make sure she gets to her next appointment of duty safely, and then you will go and gather what's left of our shopping and return with it to the monastery. And  _if_ I hear," he added in a harsh whisper, green eyes hot, "that you have paused along the way to interfere with anybody, anybody at all –  _especially Miss Gainsborough –_ I will see you cleaning absolutely every triangle of stained glass within the chapel for three months.  _Do I make myself clear?"_

Gulping, the novice nodded, eyelids fluttering slightly. Axel levelled him with a steady scowl, measuring his sincerity, before finally letting him go with a jerk. Expression clearing the instant the blond was out of the way, he smiled up at Aerith, who stood awkwardly nearby, evidently waiting to politely excuse herself from their esteemed presence. "Miss Gainsborough – as a sign of our thanks for your help, young Demyx here will be escorting you to wherever you next need to be. Please, if you need anything _carried,_ heavy things that perhaps you were delaying for another time – do not hesitate to use him." Axel's smile turned sweet, and was answered in kind by the young woman's, though Aerith's sweetness was perhaps rather a bit more genuine than his own.

Dipping on her knee as Selphie had done, the brunette thanked him for his generosity, and departed with the suddenly gloomy-looking acolyte in tow, Demyx shooting one final, pleading glance over his shoulder before he descended to the lower level of the house. There was a scuffle of noise just as they reached the bottom, Axel half-lifting from his chair with a frown, only to lower back down as a well-dressed man with long brown hair in his late thirties came striding up the staircase, features set into an expression that seemed torn between anger and anxiety. Dark eyes settling on the red-haired ecclesiastic, he demanded with a rough voice, "My old man! Where is he?! Where's Yen-Sid?"

Maintaining a calm face, Axel pointed towards the door beside him, opening his mouth to speak only to flinch seconds later as the handle slammed to a halt a bare inch away from his face, the well-dressed man already storming into the room.  _"Dad!_ Yen-Sid, what the  _hell_ are you doing? Why is he sick?"

"Because he's sick," came the flat, matter-of-fact response. Then, raising his voice slightly, Yen-Sid called, "Father, if you are in fact still conscious, please push the door shut again." Axel hesitated for a moment, before poking the shining brass handle with his finger until it had swung back to the frame.

For several minutes afterward, there was an agitated muffle of voices from within, the louder obviously belonging to the master of the house, Sir Jecht, while the more cutting of the two was easily recognised as the physician's. Quite quickly, there was only Yen-Sid's voice remaining, before finally, silence returned. Axel pondered the possibility that they'd knocked each other out, entertaining himself with the various ways in which they might have done so while he waited, not entirely sure why he was still there at all. The doctor was here, after all – it was quite polite of him, the redhead supposed, to allow him to stay, because it would mean he wouldn't have to wait to find out the outcome another day – but Yen-Sid, despite his manner, hadn't really given Axel the  _opportunity_ to leave. It was curious, and a little unsettling. He felt out of place in such a luxurious setting; the house was very lavishly decorated, the family obviously moneyed. Accustomed to a much more austere environment, he felt awkward in such a place. However, if this was what was required of him, he would remain, at least until the time became a little ridiculous.

Resigning himself to the one thing that never really had been his forte – oh, patience, wicked mistress of order – Axel exhaled slowly, and let the minutes pass by. Somewhere nearby, a grandfather clock could be heard ticking, its heavy metronome seeming to compound time into a slowly trickling stream, as if an hourglass had been set before him, with every grain of sand falling to the bottom letting out another interminable, sharp  _tock._

At length, the door opened again. Axel's eyelids, caught at a half-mast stare of sightlessness, blinked, gaze coming up as, this time, the handle remained neutral and did not attempt to harm him. The man that emerged, quiet and efficient even in his motions, was Yen-Sid. The physician glanced down at him as he slowly slid the door shut again, an unimpressed grimace on his lips. "...Priests are getting younger," he muttered. He then heaved a weary breath. "But I saw you several times last year during the smallpox virus, Father, and so know you to be reasonably adept at what you do." Confusion spreading across Axel's face, the doctor turned to face him directly. "I leave him in your hands from here. There is nothing more that a man of science can do – his body is beyond the expertise of medicine. It's time for his soul to have its turn."

Comprehension… dawned. Axel's face dropped, a crease appearing along his forehead. "He's dying…?"

"If you don't hurry," Yen-Sid grunted, already turning away, his large eyes half obscured by their bushy brows, "you'll miss it." As he set off down the hallway, his voice drifted back in parting: "Go comfort him, Father. The man is awake, and frightened. I'm no good at this part. A man stammers that he's dying, and I tell him, 'Yes, you are. At least your memory's fine.'"

Moments later, the front door to the manor banged, announcing his exit, Axel still sitting in his chair and blinking. Then, as Yen-Sid's words sank in, he let out a small gasp, pushing to his feet and entering the room.

It was still dim, but Yen-Sid had evidently lit candles for visibility; they stood still, flames tall and silent above misshapen lumps of wax. It took a moment, in the hush, to locate the old man's son, Sir Jecht standing very quietly by the curtained window. It was still afternoon outside, but within the room, darkness had already long-fallen.

Axel stepped past the threshold, clearing his throat slightly to gain the dazed-looking man's attention, Sir Jecht's head swinging around as if it were heavy upon his neck, gaze touching only briefly on the red-haired priest before shifting over to the bed. Sadness welling in Axel, he walked over to where a chair had been set up at the bedside, the old man from the marketplace lying with his arms pressed against his sides on top of the blanket. His eyes were open, focused on the ceiling, and for a gut-wrenching moment, Axel thought he really had missed the event – but then, noticing the motion, the aged eyes slid towards him. As Yen-Sid had warned… there was fear within them.

Parting his lips, the man croaked, "Father…"

Over by the window, Jecht ran a hand through his hair sharply. "I'm… gonna go get my kid," he said, to no one in particular. "Gotta… make sure he's not still cryin'." In a mutter, he added, "Shit, he's gonna cry so much…" With a heavy sigh, he turned from the window and strode to the door, vanishing from the room, Axel blinking at his sudden lack of presence.

From the bed came a wheeze which could have been either a cough or a laugh. When his eyes returned to the patient, the old man said apologetically, "He doesn't express emotion well, Father. It's how I raised him. It would be better for him if he… missed…" His voice, which had been strained and thin before now, suddenly faded completely away. Looking suddenly less of a man, more of a child, he fixed his yellowed gaze pleadingly on the redhead. "What… comes next, Father? Where – will I go?"

Axel felt a slow throb in his chest, sorrow for this poor creature's uncertainty. Reaching out from his chair, he took hold of the nearest, spotted hand, held its coolness tightly within his warmth. "Surely to Heaven, for you have been a good and honest child of God. You have no need of fear."

The old man licked his cracked lips with a pale tongue, eyes slipping briefly shut, features contracting into a moue of gentle distress. He shook in Axel's grasp as he whispered, "Ahh… but… I am still afraid."

Axel's breaths were deep, even, though his heart began to beat more swiftly. Unable to give it thought, he kept his focus on the man in need, ventured cautiously, "…You fear because… you do not know what happens next? From the moment of death, to finding Heaven?"

His lips trembled, a swallow forced down. From under his closed lids, a tear appeared, glistening its way down his wrinkled cheek. He rasped, "I don't know. I'm simply… scared to die."

Squeezing his hand carefully, the priest let out a gradual sigh, his pity enormous. But… beneath it, there also resided a sensation of – peace. Because this man had no certainty as to what happened  _next,_ what happened once he closed his eyes with that finality that could not be undone, he was – terrified. Even as a child of God, he could not repress his feelings of doubt and anxiety.

Axel, however… was holding on to a tenuous certainty that told him, no matter what, that safety would be waiting on the other side of waking. His fingers twitching around the old man's, the description of the reaper Sora in mind, slightly hoarsely he said, "…You will be guided, my friend. There will be one to take you safely on. And he will be kind to you; you will not be afraid in his presence."

The dying man's eyes re-opened, the idea apparently appealing, his fear briefly overwhelmed by innocent, vulnerable hope. In their last moments, all of God's children were precisely this – merely children. "In – God's presence? God will meet me?"

The redhead paused, then nodded, the gesture slight but firm. "On the other side, God will meet you. At Heaven's gates. Between this bed, and that point, I believe a hand will be waiting."

For a long moment, the man stared at Axel, as if he hardly dared to believe it… but then, he nodded as well. The tension that had been in him began to drain away. Calmer now, he settled down into his pillow, and closed his eyes once again.

By the time Sir Jecht had returned with his blond son, the old man was no longer within the room. He had passed, with Axel holding his hand, and somewhere out of vision's limitations, someone else's had grasped the other.

As the priest readied himself to leave later on that night, having comforted the family, in particular the child, he reflected on the afternoon's events, and realised with placidity that he had reached his decision. There was, he thought, no such thing as right or wrong where his interest in reapers was concerned; if death were going to happen anyway, then there should be no harm in his paying it close attention. What he had was not merely a fascination that had raged out of control; it was a recognition that there were things in this world that could not necessarily be automatically known. For many… for one man, today… that created fear.

Axel… didn't want to suffer such uncertainty. It was easy enough to believe when one wasn't the one counting his last breaths; less so, it would seem, when the darkness was looming. He wanted to get to the root of this mystery, it had set itself a fire in his heart and mind, and he didn't want to just  _forget_ about it. He didn't want to end up an old man who lay on his deathbed and didn't know what was coming.

He would pursue this matter; and, if God favoured him, he would find his answer.

 


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

The infant had been screaming throughout the entire ceremony. Axel was drawing on all his God-given patience, but by the end even the parents of the child were beginning to look frayed by the constant, blinding level of noise. His voice sailed above it all, straining to be heard as he spoke the blessings welcoming the new child into a promise of faith and Heavenly reward. His prayer book in one hand, the solid silver goblet belonging to the town's small church in the other, he scooped up the clean, clear holy water and tipped it, three times, across the baby's forehead. The screaming intensified as if the Devil itself was being exorcised from the child's body, then with a final, strangled prayer and the lighting of a candle, the baptism was complete.

Axel patted the baby awkwardly, sending the mother a tight smile, exhausted on the inside but trying not to show it on the outside as he went to each of the parishioners and one by one wished them well, accepting their praise and thanks in return. "You're very kind. Very kind," he parroted, until he was raw in the throat. His eyes were itching, burning; he hadn't been getting enough sleep lately, and this town was towards the fringe of the monastery's boundary of duties. He'd been awake since before dawn to get here on time, and would be staying overnight in the empty priest's quarters, sharing the room with, to his weary resignation, Demyx. The acolyte had been sent to be his dogsbody during the overnight trip, carrying his bags, preparing for the baptism, and generally tagging along for observation purposes. However, having been beneath invitation to the ceremony, he, unlike Axel, was not now sporting a raging headache.

The two of them were treated to dinner in the family home of the newly baptised infant, who promptly vomited once it had been changed and calmed, just as everyone was sitting down to eat. All in all, it was one of the more memorable days in Axel's priesthood, and one he was eager to put behind him.

These days… Axel's enthusiasm for the smaller tasks had started to wane. A child's baptism into the faith was no less important than it ever had been, but – he felt it would be better performed by another. Such a small place like this didn't have a priest all of its own, and wouldn't in the near future, making tiresome trips an almost weekly necessity; there were villages and minor towns scattered all throughout the monastery's influence, and unless one of the clergy chose to actually live within them, it ended up like this, with one priest or another being sent out to perform his duties one or even two or three days away. It was… becoming tiresome for Axel. He would rather, he now recognised, have been presiding over the deathbeds of the weak than the baptisms of the new.

It had been a month since the day he'd made his decision regarding reapers, six weeks from the point he'd first received the leather-bound book which he had yet to return to Zexion's dark library. He had grown to fear meeting the man around the monastery, knowing that, if nothing else, the monk had little patience for overdue reading material. Had it only been a thicker text, Axel have had more of an excuse – but by now, even reading as slowly as possible through every page, he had gone through the reaper book a minimum of ten times. He knew it cover to cover; he was beginning to be bored by it, if only because it was providing nothing new to him anymore. But still, he couldn't bear to take it back. It was, after all, symbolic. He hated the thought of letting it go; it was the turning point of his choice to pursue the idea of the reapers, and he resented the Brother for making him feel hemmed in like this. Luckily, Zexion was reclusive; so far, they had had no major confrontation regarding Axel and the book, or Axel and his fixation with the death angels. Instead, he merely received the occasional hard look from the scholar during meals – but the silence which was enforced during these times allowed the redhead to escape unscathed on the few occasions that the Brother joined them. Thus far, Zexion had not attempted to conscientiously seek him out. It was a small mercy for which he was endlessly grateful.

However, at the end of a day like this, his most prevalent thought was that  _despite_ having made all the important decisions, he really had nothing else to add to his experiences. The frustration this inspired was a terrible affliction, for which he knew no real cure – aside from, of course, a fresh source from which to draw, to increase his knowledge and understanding. He needed to know more, much more, before he could begin to assume any hope regarding actually  _meeting_ a reaper. He had in his mind the accounts given by the prophet Riku, but the man had been dabbling in all sorts of darkness before he ran into Sora; he'd been  _dealing_ in death, not merely observing it. Axel knew that the practices which Riku had undergone would be nothing that he himself could ever dream to indulge in. It would mean casting aside everything: faith, life, heart, soul – all in the pursuit of intangible power. That prophet had been saved by the reaper angel, had found him, or more appropriately been found, in the darkest pits of vile despair; Axel did not need any such rescue. Nor would he ever even consider sinking to such depths. Thus, his conundrum: the only detailed example he had was useless to him.

That night, trying to sleep within the unfamiliar, draughty little priest's quarters, Demyx breathing heavily on the floor under a pile of rough blankets, Axel was restless. His stomach gurgled quietly to itself, his hunger sharp, having been unable to consume terribly much after the fiasco with the infant earlier in the evening. Though he squeezed his eyes shut and let the minutes pass, his legs continued to twitch from this side of the narrow cot to the other, sometimes curled beneath him, sometimes stretched out straight so that his feet were exposed, clad in thick socks. Eventually, the blankets were a mess; twisted all over the place, barely covering him.

He sighed impatiently, sitting up to try and rearrange it all, only to end up with the tangle even worse. He would have to get up and completely remake the bed, if he was going to get any decent rest; and quite frankly, even then he didn't think things were going to be much easier. He spent a long minute glaring down at his knees, debating internally, listening to Demyx's audible breaths down beside the cot. How was it that the happy fool was able to sleep better than he himself, even though he was stretched only across a series of thin blankets to cushion the worst of the hardness? It was unfair, Axel decided, with a brief burst of umbrage.

The bitterness was short-lived. His agitation had nothing to do with Demyx; it didn't even have much at all to do with his inability to sleep. It was the issue of the reapers, just like it had been for the past six weeks. Six weeks of substandard sleep… no wonder his energy was beginning to flag.

Grimacing, Axel gathered his blankets, wrapped them around his thinly-clothed body, and stood from the aged cot. He spent a minute shrugging everything into a more comfortable draping position, so that he was swathed in the warm fabric. Then, moving softly, trying to not cause any disruptive breezes, he moved around the bed and past Demyx's slumbering form, leaving the tiny bedroom. He wouldn't be getting any sleep anytime soon, not even if he were on a feather mattress with a thousand pillows on every side. Instead, he briefly prowled the neglected priest's quarters, the small, dusty sitting room with its two rickety chairs, empty fireplace with its clogged chimney, and a worn little bookcase. The books were packed in, obviously hoarded from when someone more scholarly had lived here, but looked to be in a thoroughly untouched condition; the locals hadn't bothered to disturb them for quite some time.

For a moment Axel hesitated, before sweeping over to the case, already knowing his efforts would be fruitless but nevertheless unable to stop himself from running his fingers along the many untitled spines. Mouth twitching, eyes unsettled, he touched them one by one, drawing his lower lip into his mouth to lightly suck, going through the physical motions of consideration even though there was no one there to see him and his mind was already made up. Perhaps, in the end, he was doing it for his own benefit; pretending, for himself, that there was a chance he wasn't going to pull each and every one of those volumes out and scan them cover to cover in search of something reaper-related. It was impossible, after all; there wouldn't be any such reading material in the quarters of some long-forgotten small-town priest… he knew this, he did.

But hope, and unnamed internal pressure, was stronger.

With a heavy exhalation, he wrestled out the first book, the old case holding probably between thirty and forty various tomes all jammed in together. With that first, three others also dislodged, almost falling to the hard stone floor. Catching them before they could begin their descent, glancing over his shoulder towards the bedroom in fear of the sort of noise they would have caused had they dropped, he gathered them into his arms, awkward with the blankets wrapped all around him, and shuffled over towards the larger of the two chairs. He sank into it, arranging his blankets neatly so they wouldn't trip him later, and began the process of elimination.

It was cold out here, the low temperature seeping through each layer and into his bones so that he shivered, but no matter how chilly it became, Axel could not stop until he was absolutely certain there was nothing here he could borrow for extra reading. His own book – that is to say, Brother Zexion's book, of course – was packed in with his belongings. He had looked through it before bed, but when Demyx had begun enquiring about it, had hastily put it away again. He didn't feel like having to explain himself to a novice. He didn't think he'd be able to stand it if  _Demyx_  called him a fool. The indignity of the mere  _thought_ made his cheeks burn, and again, resentment flickered inside him, quickly smothered. His lack of freedom regarding this matter made it… quite easy for the irritation for his fellow clergymen to fire up. He had to watch himself carefully to ensure he wasn't snapping unduly at anyone,  _particularly_ an easy target like the blond.

It was all rather wearying, to say the least.

By the time dawn came, Axel had successfully proven to himself that there wasn't a single word dedicated to the topic of reapers within the priest's quarters, and replaced the books. It had been foolish of him to think otherwise, and now he was more tired than ever. With Demyx sending him quick, concerned looks, Axel breathlessly bid farewell to the townspeople that came to see them off, and fell asleep within the carriage as soon as they began the drive back to the monastery. The bag holding the reaper book clutched in his lap, he didn't rouse until late that afternoon when they finally returned, at which point he stumbled to his room on the third floor, pale-faced and ill-looking, and dropped into bed. He didn't wake again until the next morning, at which point he was informed about a sick woman in need of God's comfort.

With deep hopes that Zexion would either not notice, or at the very least not raise a fuss about it, Axel had been asking lately for increased duties presiding over the dying. There had grown in him a fascination with those uttering their last words and breaths since his interest in the reapers had become more absorbing. At times, it made him feel uncomfortable – surely there was something inherently wrong with being this deeply involved in the expiration of another, for all the wrong reasons and few of the right ones – but the fact remained that these last moments were the closest to the gateway between seen and unseen as he was going to get. Short of cutting his own mortal coil short, this was the best that Axel could manage.

He would sit by them, these poor, ailing bodies, and lean close, gripping their hands as they began to wheeze and close their eyes… and he would listen for their final gasp, as subtly as possible when the family was watching on, or more raptly when he was alone. He was sure that, on a number of occasions now, he had made some of his charges feel uneasy with his intense scrutiny, but – he was searching for signs of a reaper. He thought that if only he were attuned enough to his surroundings, at the _precise_ time of death, he might be able to sense – something? Anything? Might he hear a step, soft, or the stray rustle of a feather? And in himself, as well, did he turn his focus – was there a moment during it all when a flicker of peace unexpectedly came over him, or a flash of coldness or warmth? Wasn't there  _anything_ to alert him to the presence of something else, someone holy, within the room?

_Anything?_

Time and again, Axel found himself frustrated, disappointed, disgustingly blind and deaf to that which occurred outside of the living's range of perception. This time was no different – he went to the nearby town of the woman in question, a mother of three who had been diagnosed with a terrible and incurable affliction. For months she had been suffering, and now her time had come. The family was distraught, her husband looking weary with his arms around the children, but this moment had been long approaching. Axel had already been to see them three times prior to this occasion, comforting them in their pain, trying his hardest to be a good son of God, fighting nervously with his dark, growing anticipation as the woman grew more and more ill with his every arrival.

The father waited with his children in the sitting room as Axel, in full priestly regalia, book and wooden cross clutched in either hand, joined the fading woman in her bedroom. He sat beside her, uttering prayers for her soul, expression solemn but eyes alight and piercing, slowly switching from scanning the room to inspecting the patient herself.

At her final exhalation, her eyes drifted out of focus. She sighed,  _"Ah,"_ and smiled, Axel nearly jolting straight out of his chair, leaning forward quickly as he demanded, _"What?"_

She was already gone, borne elsewhere, soul leaving behind a body to cool and decay and be buried. For a moment, Axel was enraged. He felt taunted by her, wanted to slam his bible down onto the mattress and  _command_ her back, wanted to curse her hollow, abandoned shell for the teasing it had imparted as its last act.

Then, of course, came the guilt, clawing at his insides.

For a desperate second, the redhead wondered if he was going to cry, as if this was all a poison slowly building up inside him that needed to be leaked from his system. It passed swiftly enough, but left him feeling like he'd spent the last hour forcing his way through a windstorm; he was tired, all of a sudden, despite his hours upon hours of sleep, despite the fact that it was barely the middle of the day. He needed… reprieve. He wasn't sure what part of his life he needed it from, because even now he was unwilling to part with this obsession, but he knew that somewhere in the rest of his everyday living  _something_ had to give way. He couldn't continue in this fashion for terribly much longer; he feared he was reaching the end of his reserves.

By the time he left the deceased woman's home, golden afternoon light had fallen across the world. The trip back up to the monastery did not take long, the man able to easily do so on foot, refusing the offer of a horse. He needed time to expunge the event from his system, wrestling with the background knowledge that despite having just seen the end of a fine woman, and the sudden loneliness of her family, the most grievous thing that had happened to him today had been yet another defeat in the face of the reapers. It was not a nice feeling, this one that told him he was rapidly losing the right to call himself a good man… but if it meant that he could be, instead, an enlightened man…?

What cost, he wondered, would God appropriate for breaking the boundaries between life and death? Was it being extracted as he breathed on, or would it come when he met his end? Axel found it difficult to know. The only thing that was obvious to him these days was that he was not as happy as he once had been – but that that trivial, pleasant existence he once had known could not hold a flame to the raw burn of joy he experienced whenever he felt nearer to the reapers' discovery. Even when the lows were such as he had to endure right at this very moment, there remained a candle burning behind it all that told him  _it would be_   _worth it._

Sometimes, when he was near to sleep, Axel wondered if he was possessed. Then, he would dream of the reaper angel Sora, and wake up instead wondering how he could die without being dead, in order to push aside the veil and commune with those on the other side without passing through to join them.

With the cold air turning his throat raw, puffing mouthfuls of steam out into the late day, Father Axel stood at the foot of the drive leading to the monastery, and wondered hopelessly at what his next step was to be. It was no good being resolved about something if all that resolution then went to waste. He felt stagnated in this life now, a Siren's call singing in the darkness that he could not access, and so far, his only key to helping himself was within the influence of the one person he was most anxious to not see: Brother Zexion. In his library, among his rows upon rows of endless amounts of books,  _somewhere,_ there existed more information, more accounts. Although the supply was limited, Axel knew he had not exhausted it. Zexion had… so many,  _many_ books, and if only the redhead had had the bravery to ask, he might have already been privy to them… but then again, he doubted that.

Mouth quirking down at the corners, a glare developing before he was even aware of it, Axel stood there in the chill and stared at the great, hulking structures that created the monastery. He was tense, on edge, jaw clenched tight. Then slowly, as a muted bell suddenly rang out to toll the hour, something within the red-haired priest began to subside. He turned in the direction of the belltower, listening to the deep tone ringing out across the grounds, brow gradually easing from its furrowed state, a sense of calm falling through his chest. After a long minute, he continued walking, heading for the book depository.

Zexion was a night owl. And the time was three in the afternoon. This meant that Zexion would still most likely be asleep. The man stayed up through the most ungodly hours, and caught his slumber at the unlikeliest of times, so often so that the only time you knew you would be sure to catch him was last thing before bed, or just as dawn was breaking, towards the beginning of his 'night'. So, it stood to reason then, that as far as Zexion was concerned, it was… nearing 'morning', but not so close yet that he would be waking in the next few hours. The library…

…would be quite empty.

Without even pausing to leave his personal effects in his room, without telling anyone he was back yet, Axel retraced old steps, his coat heavy over his vestments. Determination pressed through him like smoke, curling into every limb, enveloping his head, body beginning to hum with new energy. His steps were quicker than they had been in weeks, although cautious, always warily on the lookout for passersby, anyone who would try to stop him, alert Zexion to what was going on. In that moment, everybody was the enemy – they who would stop him, they were his foes, and it yanked at his insides to have it even occur to him. He didn't  _want_ things to be this way, but he knew that understanding was more than could be hoped for! Everything, all of this, it was so  _vile._

_What was wrong with him?_

In that one moment, pausing panting at the heavy, dark door of the library's threshold, Axel and his faith wavered sharply. He physically swayed with the punching force of the uncertainty. This was mad. He was acting like some kind of lunatic, he was actually considering his  _brothers_ as his  _enemies,_ the two of them together in the same breath and thought and heartbeat! This – in his mind, what was this? This  _disease_ of wanting to know?

But, oh good Lord above, how he  _did_ want to know, burned to,  _ached_  to find what truly lay behind the veil – there would be no living a peaceful life until he could be sure of an answer either way. From here, the only way to stop him would be to kill his very thoughts, and short of a violent accident, it simply wasn't going to happen. He would _have_ to follow this through, right to its end, or risk truly losing his mind. He couldn't… spend his entire life with just a story in his head.

He had passed beyond that point. He  _couldn't._

Accepting this, difficult though it was, returned to Axel a measure of composure. He forced his hands loose at his sides, drew a deep, steadying breath and, agitation at a low burn, pushed his way into the library.

The cavernous room was much the same as always; it seemed like no matter the weather or time of day outside, nothing could touch the silent, oppressive nature of this place. It was self-sufficient, existing in its own frame of space and time, only occasionally allowing visitors such as Axel to enter its tightly-sealed pocket. Zexion, he knew, loved it. It was a world independent of that beyond its doors. In this world, without others and their opinions, where concepts like right and wrong muddied waters better left clear, Axel could find his answers in peace.

The door swung shut behind him, the redhead moving more hesitantly now that he was finally back within the space that had irrevocably changed the way his mind worked, possibly forever. His steps, soft though they were, still somehow managed to click up towards the vaulted ceiling. Pulling his coat around him more securely, feeling shivery now that he'd stepped out of the wind, Axel slowly moved deeper in, eyes again going through the routine of adjusting to the dim light, ever-burning lanterns hanging from the occasional stretching bookcase. Anxiety plucking at his nerves, the man performed a cautious check of the aisles, eyes reflecting the firelight's glow, searching nervously for the keeper of the books. If Zexion were in fact here, he would need to retreat… but, after a preliminary prowl, he ascertained that he was alone within the stacks.

Releasing a breath he hadn't known himself to be holding, some of the rigid tension left the man's muscles, though the buzzing energy remained, like steel against a grindstone in the corner of his mind. Free now to look where he wished, Axel's first act was to attempt to track down the bookshelf that had contained the volume on the reapers that Zexion had last given to him. He harangued himself irritably for not having paid closer attention to the path that the monk had followed to take him there at the time. He had been so… so busy talking on and on about the prophet Riku, he hadn't even bothered to notice his surroundings. After all, what was any of it but shelf upon shelf of books?  _Idiot,_ he chastised, a note of viciousness entering his inner voice. If only he'd been more focused then, like he was now. He could have kicked his former self for being so blasé about it all. Harbouring precious desires about capturing reapers, without even knowing the first damnable thing about what it entailed!  _Fool._

Yet, was he really any different in that respect now? At least he was taking it seriously, he supposed. That didn't aid him terribly much when he was aimlessly wandering the stacks in search of a familiar signpost from six weeks ago, though. His gaze swept the spines of the infinite tomes lovingly pressed in one against the other, feet taking him from one aisle to the next, a seed of desperation entering his chest. Lips pressing together, he began every now and again pulling a book down and opening it to preview its contents, attempting to find the order in which the scholar had organised his endless array of information.

He happened upon one of the several small, be-wheeled ladders that existed within the library, and took to dragging it, squeaking, with him, forlornly on the lookout for the empty space from which his own book had come. He struggled to find the right area in accordance to the small desk at which Zexion had sat researching that day, but gradually, that sensation of hopelessness began to steal over him anew. It was all so overwhelming. He… was not a scholar. He read, and he wrote, but he did not know the inner workings of the purely educated mind, and could not anticipate what Zexion had done with the place. He was lost in this ocean of books. He was surrounded, and somewhere within the deluge waited precisely what he was looking for, but he simply didn't know where.

And then, as he was lowering himself from the heights of one of the tall shelves, a cold voice made him freeze against the ladder: "It's been a little while, Father." Axel's hands gripped convulsively at the slender wood, teeth biting together in shock, head whipping around to the side to where the slight man stood in the glow of one of the lanterns. Zexion was not looking livid as expected, but rather resignedly placid, arms folded across his slender chest.

"Ze… Brother Zexion." Axel's voice was hollow, echoing, hoarse. His mind had gone blank, had fled the scene of the crime and left the rest of him to pick up the pieces. For a long, stretching minute, the two men stared at one another, one's eyes wide, the other's calm.

"Come down, Axel," Zexion quietly implored, and it seemed to the redhead that there was more to those words than a simple request to finish his descent of the ladder. There was a second's reluctant hesitation before Axel complied, stepping down the last few rungs and returning to steadier physical footing. Heart pounding, sweat beading across his brow and upper lip, Axel searched for something to say, his fanatical mind utterly failing him, the silence elongating. At length, Zexion let out a small sigh. "I don't suppose I need to ask why you're here." His voice was soft, strangely lacking in accusation. "Axel. You've… taken this too far, haven't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the redhead quickly replied, virtually before the monk had finished his sentence. His words, in contrast to Zexion's, were sharp, short, breathless. He was close to panicking.

Zexion studied him for a moment, inscrutable behind his hair, the yellow light glinting from his skin. "Axel. You need to return the reaper book to me. You have had it for entirely too long." When the redhead said nothing, he asked, "Will you? Will you bring it to me?"

"Will you," Axel countered challengingly, "give me another? I need more, Zexion. I… request another book. I will return the other when I have another." He licked his lips, not intending for a second to relinquish his claim on the book he already had, but more than willing to pretend in order to get the man to help him. "I didn't want to disturb you," he fabricated, thoughts slowly grinding into motion again after having been so badly startled, "since I know this is when you like to sleep. But I cannot find anything myself, I don't know your ordering system, Brother. Then, let us aid one another; you fetch me a new book, I fetch you an old book. We can… exchange them."  
"Like one hostage for another?" Zexion's tone took on a blunt edge. "I don't believe you will, Father. He who has taken to doing precisely what I warned against and is _stalking death_ , he who can barely sleep at night for all the ideas whirling inside his head, he who is at this very moment wearing his  _every_ thought on his sleeve for me to see? You are not very good at hiding your ambitions, Axel."

"I am a priest of this monastery," Axel sharply returned, pointing savagely to the ground between them, "and you will refer to me with the proper respect! I am not a child for you to chastise, Brother, and will not tolerate you treating me as such! I am a man dedicated to God, and as such I require you to aid me in my aims – my ambitions are to serve God!"

"Your ambitions are to shape yourself into a prophet," the monk snapped. "Mankind does not make its own prophets, that is for God to decide. And only a madman declares himself chosen by God, so don't even attempt it,  _Axel._ You are less and less the priest every time I see you, and it pains me to say so, believe me. For God's sake, you fool, return from that dark place that has seized your mind! Whatever happens with angels, to angels, around angels – that is  _not_ for us to know!"

"And you call yourself a scholar," the redhead sneered, the discussion taking a vicious downswing, the panic remaining strong and thick inside him despite his show of anger, forcing words and venom out of his mouth to try and bludgeon the indomitable figure before him into something more submissive.

"I want you to, of your own free will, return my book to me." Zexion lifted his chin, nowhere near to defeated by such a weak attempt at bullying. "Father Axel, as a monk of this Church and monastery, I am making this firm request. Stray not from our path to God, stray not into the darkness; go to your room, take up the cursed book that has twisted your mind from us, and bring it to me so that this period of your life can be  _over."_ When Axel looked again like he was going to argue, the man barked,  _"Can't you see when you need saving from yourself?"_

"From…!" The fight dried up in Axel, withered, fell away into powder at the sudden shock of Zexion's words. That sentence –  _didn't it echo something inside of him?_ Riku, the prophet, he had found Sora just when he needed saving from himself; he had been so deeply steeped in darkness and anguish that it took a messenger of Death itself to show him the path to the light. And now, Zexion was saying precisely such a thing to he himself…? Didn't this, then, mean that…

He was – closer than ever?

It was all he could do to not start laughing, from the sheer relief and joy of such a recognition. All this time, he had been crawling nearer to the great event without even realising. The moment he doomed himself, that was when he would be saved! Once again, Zexion was providing for him in ways he could never alone achieve. This… this had definitely been the right decision to make.

Zexion, across from him, let out a noise of impatience. Axel's attention returned to him, eyes gleaming, but before he could say anything, the monk bit off, "It doesn't matter anyway. I wanted to give you the chance to redeem yourself voluntarily, but if you're just going to be like this, it doesn't even matter."

Head quirking to the side, bobbing forward, frowning, Axel paused, asked, "What are you talking about? I don't understand."

Gaze cool, Zexion responded, "I wanted you to decide to return the book to me, Axel. I wanted you to see sense. But it is all mere formality; the book is already out of your possession, and has been for some hours."

Everything, absolutely every vein and drop of blood within, went ice cold. His body stopped moving, stopped breathing. For a moment, it felt as if his very heart ceased to murmur in his chest, as he stared, and stared, and stared some more at the tight features of the librarian. "…Zexion." There was a gasping quality to his voice. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying," the man told him, back to being quiet again now that he had won, "that I sent Brother Lexaeus to your room while you were out acting the ghoul to a dying woman, and had him search until he found it. And he did find it, under your mattress, a predictable place for a stolen belonging to be hidden."

" _Stolen!"_ Axel nearly shrieked it, the panic exploding now, catching fire and turning to fury. "You invaded my quarters, sifted through  _my_ belongings, and took away  _my book!"_

" _My_  book!" Zexion snapped, unmoved by the sudden, burning glare contorting the priest's face. "It was only ever in your possession as a borrowed item, and I have taken it back as is my will. If you will not stop things in their tracks, Father, then it is up to your elders and betters to do so  _for_ you. When one cannot save himself, the responsibility no longer lies with only him!"

" _That book,"_ Axel roared,  _"is the property of the monastery, and I am of the monastery! I am a priest of God!"_

"And you are failing," Zexion witheringly replied, "at that vocation with every word you add to this discussion." As the redhead heaved for air, he concluded, "I have nothing more to say on the matter, Axel. Don't return to this library until you have regained your wits, or I will be forced to go straight to the Superior and report your behaviour. More fool me for not having done so already, but I had a little faith in you to do the right thing. Again, I say, more fool me."

As he turned to leave, Axel harshly cried, "Give it back to me!"

"I won't," the man tossed over his shoulder.

Axel advanced on him suddenly, violently, entire body vibrating, volume rising,  _"I said to give it back to me!"_

Zexion whirled back to face him as he closed the distance within them in a heartbeat, an arm coming up defensively as Axel loomed over him, snarling, "Father Axel, if you so much as touch me, your troubles will multiply a thousandfold! Don't you  _dare_  try to physically intimidate me!"

Just as Axel was about to seize the man's arm, almost all reason lost in the haze of his rage, a frightened squeak interrupted the escalating dispute with all the effectiveness of a gunshot fired into the air. The two men jumped apart, faces coming around to gaze wide-eyed at the newcomer neither had noticed approaching – an incredibly timid-looking Demyx, standing knock-kneed and gaping at the two of them so close to blows. In his arms, he carried a heavy tome, pressed against his chest as if it could protect him from the onslaught. He swallowed visibly as they stared, stammering wordlessly for several seconds before managing to croak, "I can, I can come back later?"

"What book is that?" Zexion asked sharply, blowing a lock of hair out of his unobscured eye agitatedly.

"F-Father Vexen asked me to bring it to you, I don't, I'm not sure which one it is, though? I don't really understand the title?" The blond looked two words away from bolting, with or without the massive book. "But I can see that you're busy," he yammered on, already beginning to back away, "so I'll just go tell Vexen that –"

"You'll do nothing of the sort." Zexion sighed hard, stepping back from Axel's zone of hostility, pushing his fingertips against his forehead as though an ache were developing. " _'The Structure of Ice in Science and its Applicable Values'_?"He gestured impatiently. "Come here, boy, I can't very well see his notes while you're clutching them."

Demyx's pale eyes flicked to Axel, the man still, chin lowered, face partially swallowed by shadow. "Uhm…"

"Father Axel," Zexion said in chilly tones, "was just leaving anyway." Turning his head suddenly towards the redhead, he added acidly, "Weren't you, Father?"

Axel twitched slightly. There was something in that moment that Zexion would later come to recall, in the priest's features, which unsettled him. A change had occurred within his expression, all the hot fire that had all but consumed it now fled in favour of an element which was… darker. At the time, he hesitated, lips parting, a scowl beginning to crease his brow – but then Demyx was moving towards him, and Axel, without uttering another sound, was leaving. The spell broken in favour of lighter distractions, Zexion turned his focus away from the redhead, allowed him to slip away while he attempted to ground himself within the pages of Vexen's research.

Axel, meanwhile, had found a new path to follow. He left the library, star-studded twilight swathing the world, proving just how badly he'd let time slip away from him… but at least, from this mess, he had found direction. At long last, he had signposts pointing the way; God truly wanted this from him, there was little doubt of it now. There was no way that it could be –  _anything_ else, the coincidence was too strong, the directive too clear to ignore. Axel… knew, now, which way to go from here.

Besides which, Zexion had taken his book. If Axel didn't act now, he would lose out entirely.

He strode through the monastery's pathways stiffly, back straight, jaw hard, robes swinging out behind him. With night's wings falling across the monastery's hard towers and coloured windows, he ventured out onto the lawns, around the side of the main building until he reached the dirt path leading to the cellar doors. He followed it, reaching the wooden barriers minutes later, and bent down to grasp one of the heavy metal rings. Muscles straining, Axel hauled backward, lifting the door open, settling it back on its hinges. Taking a moment to push the hair from his eyes, Axel glanced around for any onlookers, then swiftly swept down the lit stairs and into Vexen's laboratory. The man himself, Axel knew, would not be around at this point in time. It was close to the dinner bell tolling, and most of the clergymen occupying the monastery spent these last several minutes washing and preparing for the meal, their duties for the moment forgotten.

This first room, under the cellar's external entrance, consisted of Vexen's workbenches, his experiments laid out in beakers and tubes and meticulously kept brass and silver instruments designed to measure and weigh and God only knew what else. The placement was deliberate, so that any fumes that accumulated could be easily released, this being the most ventilated part of the cellar network. The next room, safe away from the mildew that might have developed if left in the airier space, was Vexen's personal library of his own books that he himself had written, or texts by his peers. Axel knew from memory that the selection was entirely scientifically-based; certainly nothing on reapers in there.

However… beyond the minor library, in a small room that had a bolt on the door not to prevent people from entering but to highlight the fact that the contents behind it had to be well protected, that barging in was definitely against the rules… lay the apothecary.

It was this room that Axel entered, having passed through the other two without touching a single thing, his eyes barely diverging from their focused position on that distant point of the bolt. He slid the lock to the side, slipped inside and closed the door gently behind himself. He was now among all the potions – healers, disinfectors, venoms, sedatives and more – that Vexen had ever brewed. They lined great wooden cabinets and shelves along each wall, bright bottles that gleamed in a myriad of colours – blues, greens, yellows, some vile browns and glittering whites… and, only three of them, reds.

The red bottles were indeed the most rare, their contents the most difficult to brew, the very most cherished. It certainly tugged at Axel's conscience, the slightest amount at least, to requisition one for himself… but then, it was, after all, a matter of great need, which was, in the end, precisely what these particular potions were reserved for. He pulled one of the slender bottles from the highest shelf, standing on his toes to reach it. Sliding it into one pocket of his overcoat, his gaze then travelled over the remaining potions with a critical eye. He didn't often find himself face-to-face with the full collection of Vexen's concoctions, and certainly if the man had been as self-reliant at remembering their order as Zexion was with his books Axel would have most likely been out of luck… but, Vexen was, before most else, a man of science; thus, his work was all labelled quite clearly. It was in the man's scratching shorthand, but Axel was nonetheless able to decipher the names and single out the one that, at the current moment, most interested him.

He took a smoky green bottle, slightly smaller than the red one, from its glass-fronted cupboard; it was warm to the touch. Holding it in his palm, he allowed that warmth to radiate into his hand, rubbed his thumb against the glass, spreading a partial print across it. Taking a sudden, shaking breath, the priest slipped the green bottle into his coat along with the red, shrugging his shoulders up stiffly, and left the room.

Heart thundering with sudden terror of being happened upon, it was all he could do to not run directly for the doors, escape back out into the night. Rather, keeping a grip on himself, Axel managed a sedate walk through the laboratory, ascended into the cold air, and carefully lowered the heavy door back down, as if it had never been disturbed. There remained no sign of his ever having been there; except, that is, for the two missing bottles from Vexen's collection. The red one's absence would be immediately noticed, so, though he didn't know how frequently Father Vexen entered the apothecary, he decided to forgo any semblance at normalcy and skipped dinner entirely, even as the bell began to boom out. Perhaps he would not be missed; after all, he hadn't attended the evening meal the previous night, due to being asleep. Maybe the others would simply assume he had done the same again tonight, and would not come to interfere for fear of waking him.

He made straight for the dormitories, passing no one along the way, and climbed the stairs to his room. Although there were no locks for any of the chambers, the brothers had their own system of privacy in the form of a wooden wedge to hold their doors shut if they were submerged in meditation, or, in the case of men like Vexen, absorbed in study of some form. Axel slid his into place, tested it to make sure it could not be casually shoved aside, and began to shake again, harder this time.

Swallowing, shivering, he slid off his coat, carefully reaching into the pocket and withdrawing the two coloured vials. They clicked quietly together on his palm, the green one still exuding that curious heat. Staring at them, Axel lowered himself onto the bed. Moving slowly, he used his feet to lever off each of his shoes, pushing his pillow up onto the backboard so that he could recline comfortably against it, and lay back, his chin almost touching his chest. All the while, his gaze never left the two inconsequential-looking bottles.

Now, he supposed, nervously licking his lips, would be the time to back out; at this point in the proceedings, he still had that option. This was not something he had to do, it was his  _choice…_ But then, were he to abandon it at this point, he doubted he'd have the nerve to come this far again. And, quite frankly, were he to let his fear overwhelm him, he didn't know that he'd even have the courage to  _return_ the bottles; taking them had been an act of grim impulse. To actually consciously decide to return there and risk being caught meddling was a notion that made his heart flutter, blood thumping uncomfortably at his throat and temples.

Closing his eyes, the redhead took several fortifying breaths, separating the bottles into one hand each, rolling them between his fingers and feeling them blindly. To opt out now, when he was so close to an answer all on his own… to do so would be a gesture of surrender. To do so would be to relinquish his fixation, this obsession, and acknowledge that he was not a man worthy of knowing what secrets existed out of perception's reach. So the question was, no matter what anxieties existed: was he willing to give it up?

Of course, the answer had to come in the negative, and he almost laughed out loud, a short, tight bark welling in the back of his throat.  _Don't be ridiculous,_ he wanted to say. If he had been inclined to give up, he'd have never come this far in the first place. Perhaps this wasn't the most thought-out of plans, but it was certainly the most inspired, and what was inspiration but the voice of God whispering into one's mind?

God, perhaps, or His angels.

So, rather than think overmuch on the subject, Axel did what he had meant to do the moment he had grasped the bottles in Vexen's lab; he removed the corks of each, measuring them against each other, wondering which to take first. The green being, of course, a poison created for the extermination of vermin, while the red was one of the fabled concoctions of Phoenix down. What Vexen must have undergone to have three such death-cheaters within his possession, Axel could not begin to imagine. But they were real, and such things worked flawlessly, he knew. If Vexen ever found out he had stolen one like this, he would no doubt have to waste a second, reviving Axel after strangling him with his bare hands.

Deep breaths. Deep, slow breaths, and a decision to go first with the red, because Phoenix down was purported to take some several minutes to work, whereas the venom in this concentration, well…

It was better not to consider it too closely.

Then: the resuscitator. He swallowed the bottle's contents in a single gulp, the potion somewhat flavourless, leaving a curious tingle along the way which was not unpleasant. He waited for perhaps ten seconds, then chased the red with the green, mind already blank, forcefully shut down against the instinct to survive, heart beating wildly in protest but ignored.

 _You know,_ he heard his own voice tell him casually, in a sudden moment of clarity,  _that you're mad, don't you?_

Oh, yes. He'd had an inkling. But he had to delude himself, for fear of losing to it and being absorbed. He had the feeling he'd been mad from birth, to be honest. Before this had been God; before God had been fire; before fire, there had been sharp things. He had briefly swayed the course of his obsessive personality towards something greater than himself, something healing and good… but it seemed his natural predilection was towards that which was ultimately self-destructive.

As long as it worked, he didn't really mind.

With this thought sticking in his skull, Axel dropped both hands to his sides with sudden weakness. The poison did not burn on the way down; it tasted vicious, though, made him want to heave it all back up, but he repressed the urge desperately. Continuing to breathe evenly, allowing the maximum amount of oxygen to flow through his body, he lay there, wide-eyed, and waited for an entire minute before the first convulsion came. He doubled over without meaning to, knees drawn up to his chest, respiration a suddenly ragged affair, voice creaking out of his mouth without cause or want; strange, animalistic grunts.

The burn had been reserving itself; his throat caught on fire, a stiletto had been shoved down there, it was a piercing agony that tore all the way to his belly and then exploded ferociously. Up and down and real lost all meaning; existence was a searing lake of swirled thoughts and sights and sounds, none of which made any sense, and never had. He was on the bed, he was sinking through the bed, he was melting into it, he was vomiting blood onto it.

He started coughing harshly, wildly, on blood and mucus and bile, he couldn't inhale anymore because every time he tried, he spasmed. Eyes rolling into skull, teeth slicing into cheek and adding yet more blood to the mix in his mouth and throat and stomach and lungs, Axel was no longer alive, not quite dead. He was drowning on himself, in his obsession, his own fluids. He was blind, he couldn't hear anything, but he could feel the world spinning faster and faster around him until he couldn't hold on anymore and was flung from the bed, twisting and writhing, slamming to the cold stone floor. He choked out a hoarse cry, a painful wail of despair, hands all over himself, scratching and clawing and trying to find a grip.

Then, at long forgiving last, Axel shuddered out his last breath, and his tormented, tainted body expired.

He was still sobbing when a calm voice suddenly struck up in the new silence: "It's all right now; you can breathe again." Heaving, Axel shook his head frantically, balled up into himself on the bed, hiccupping softly in the back of his throat. There came a slight sigh, a rustling noise, then a light, gentle touch to his shoulder. "You, there. I tell you, you're fine. Open your eyes, and look about you. Feel yourself." Slowly, Axel went still. This voice… it wasn't familiar. Additionally, he was not used to being spoken to in such a way. He paused, then did as bidden, cautiously felt himself, felt his face, dry of tears, and lips, vacant of blood. He touched his neck, carefully, pressed his cool fingertips in and felt no pain. He lifted his eyes beyond the circle of his face-shielding arms… and saw a pair of blue irises staring directly into his own.

The breath left Axel all over again, but this time, not due to any poison coursing through his system, destroying it piece by piece. For a long moment, he simply stared into those eyes, pale and so clear. He uttered, in almost a whisper, "…Sora?"

The blue eyes blinked, surprise glinting in their depths, and their owner drew away, straightened from his bent position over the foetal redhead. He looked… like a boy. Ethereally beautiful, perhaps, but a boy nevertheless. Messy blond hair, a youthful face, heavy lashes and a delicate mouth. For a moment, Axel wondered if he was mistaken, that somehow… someway… this stranger had simply found his way into his room, perhaps in answer to his yells.

Then came the rustling sound again, the priest's gaze snapping up over the boy's shoulder and widening at the sight of… feathers. Wings. Extending from the boy's back. Long, black robes that hung from his small body, wingtips drooping almost all the way to the ground behind him. Great, sharp scythe standing from the ground, held steady in one hand.

Good Lord, the boy was Death all over. And yet, despite this… so unmistakeably an angel.

The reapers. They were real. He'd been… right.

The angel was sending Axel a strange look, one blond eyebrow twitching the slightest bit higher than the other in a show of wary curiosity. Even as Axel was realising that the creature in front of him was nothing like the physical description that Riku had given on Sora, the winged boy answered, "No… You are thinking of my brother."

"Ah. Yes." Axel felt numb. No, wait… he felt… light. He felt…  _light._ Sitting up was the easiest thing he had ever done in his life. And the air – it looked different, it was… swimming? It was, it was  _swimming._ It – it lulled back and forth, like the ocean, but only in the most faintly subtle of ways. It was like somebody breathing. It was like… his mother's heartbeat. Oh… oh, he had forgotten this sound, this sensation… He closed his eyes, without thought, and inhaled it.

"Your life," the angel quietly said, into the hush, "has ended. It's time for you to leave this world, lamb of God, and be received at Heaven's gates." When Axel opened his eyes again, the blond was holding out his hand. "Take this, my hand," he intoned, "and by it, discover your way Heavenward, for judgement."

Axel stared at the proffered appendage, making no move to comply. Patiently, the other waited, his expression never faltering, as though hesitation was to be expected. Slowly, far too slowly, Axel's mind was recovering and attempting to process this sudden sequence of events that had passed like lightning leaving mere images seared onto his retinas. He eyed the angel's lined palm, so human looking, and asked the already stated. "Then – I'm truly dead?"

"That is correct. I have come to lead you onward. So, please, lamb of God – take my hand."

This was what… he'd wanted, was it not? He had felt it happen, the act of dying, and now – now here he was, his crippled former figure nowhere in sight where it had fallen, just Axel and… this reaper, together, alone together in his room with the rippling air, as though the mortal world didn't even exist. Lifting his eyes to the angel's face, he opened his mouth, struggled for a moment, before his mind sharply warned,  _Time limit!_ How long did he have before the elixir revived him? How long until this was all snatched away? He tensely rubbed at his forehead – spiritual flesh, he thought with a start – before requesting in a tight voice, "Sir Reaper… I am no true lamb of God in this instant. Call me by my name, which is Axel."

A slight shadow had started creeping into the blond's expression, but he nevertheless inclined his head, agreeing, "Axel, then. I shall do so, if only you will take my hand."

"And your name?" There was a raw quality to the man's tone, a clear note of longing which made both of them pause.

"…My brother," the angel quietly told him, "calls me Roxas."

 _Roxas._ Axel's reaper had a  _name._

"Please, lamb of – Axel. The longer we stay here like this, in the vicinity of your body –" the mention of it brought it flashing into their peaceful section of existence; previously invisible, Axel caught a glimpse of his own crumpled corpse upon the ground before it vanished again "– the greater the chance that you will be found by more unsavoury creatures than I." Roxas –  _Roxas! –_ tightened his grip on the tall, dangerous-looking scythe at his side. "I can protect you, if you allow me to." He pushed his hand forward again, more insistently this time. Axel darted it only a perfunctory glance now, wanting to keep his gaze upon the reaper's features for as long as possible, memorising every colour and shape.

"Your hand…  _must_ I take it, in order to be guided? What would happen if I did not?"

The blond's serenity was beginning to fragment. "Were you to be so foolish, you would suffer for it. If you know the path to God from here, I beg of you reveal it to me, so that I may merely point the legions of dead towards it and save myself some effort. Don't ask foolish questions. You are dead; recognise what is best for your soul, and take my hand!"

"Your skull doesn't seem wicked to me," Axel suddenly said, throwing the angel off-balance.

"What?"

"Is it true that reaper angels cannot love?"

Roxas blinked, bewildered. "I –"

"Do you love your brother?"

The blond shook his head roughly, as if to brush away Axel's barrage. "Why are you so inquisitive?" he demanded. "This  _isn't_ how you are supposed to act! You are  _dead!_ The time has come for you to either take my hand, or –"

"Or what?" Axel pounced. "Will I simply stay, if you don't guide me?"

"Without a reaper," Roxas sighed, sounding exasperated and unaccustomed to it, "the dead are  _lost._ Don't you see? What kind of man  _were_ you, to be asking so many annoying questions?"

Axel debated a moment, uneasy. "…I am a priest."

Bemusement flooded the angel's features. "Why, then, are you so reluctant to trust me, and leave?"

The redhead clicked his teeth together, hesitating again. "It… isn't a matter of trust…" He drew a breath, though the act, in death, was certainly arbitrary. "Roxas…" He spoke the name not in a beseeching manner, but simply to taste it. "I fear that my time here with you is short. I had imagined, upon my death, that the reaper Sora would be the one to meet me, as described by the prophet Riku –"

" _That_ man? Don't tell me he still lives, he irritated me." Then, "Wait." Roxas was staring at him. "You wanted Sora?" …Did Axel detect the slightest amount of disappointment in his tone? More flatly, he went on, "I apologise, Sir Priest."

"Axel. And don't. I am happy to have met you." Axel smiled, an odd expression for some reason, containing strange, vibrant depths. "I already knew of your brother. Finding that you exist as well, it – it makes me glad. Sora belonged to Riku's mind, his obsession… this way, Roxas, you can belong to  _mine."_

Roxas was frowning, a distance developing in his gaze. "You know not of what you speak. Axel, I will exist only very briefly for you. You will gladly forget my existence, I assure you, once you are with God. Do not confuse yourself. That which occurred between Riku and my brother…" His face turned to the side, the frown growing deeper. "Those were special circumstances."

"But so are these," Axel told him, leaning forward, eyes alight. "And you're wrong, I won't forget you, I couldn't! Roxas, you've no idea…" Another breath, sucked in hard. "…no conception of how much I've  _craved…"_

Roxas' eyes jumped wide, stilling Axel's words in his mouth, but it was not the low depth of his voice or increasingly impassioned manner of his words which drew such a response from the angel. "You!" Roxas hesitated, passed his hand in front of Axel's face, seeming to feel the air around him. "What is this? Something is happening. Something… you… you're – anchored?" Confusion morphed to comprehension in a flash, anger streaking across the angel's features. "You are returning?"

"Roxas…" Axel felt strange, felt sick, felt – tingly all over, a weight developing in his stomach, just behind his navel.

The reaper's anger turned dark. "You've tricked me."

"No!" Desperation flared in the priest as the angel turned to leave, turned not towards the door but the wall, as if his next step would take him beyond reach of even the dead. "Not a trick!" Axel cried frantically, lunging forward and snatching hold of his wrist. "Roxas –!"

Roxas gasped audibly at the contact, as if the only part of him that had ever been touched was restricted solely to the planes of that one hand he constantly offered forth. He tugged hard, could not break the priest's wild grip, raised blue eyes which were filled with sudden fear and panic, and choked, "No,  _Axel,_ let –"

" ** _Axel!"_**

The redhead was no longer light, no longer safe, no longer whole – with a terror-struck Zexion holding him up from the pool of his own sticky blood coating the floor, he opened his mouth and let loose a cascade of red from deep inside. It splattered in with the rest of the mess, Axel's groaning voice an unrecognisable, tortured whispering rasp. He could hardly breathe through all the fluids clogging his airway, his head was lost in a spinning, dizzy fog. He was in agony, all over again, only this time,  _this_ time he would not die, his flesh would prevail, revived and cleared of the poison by the miraculous cure-all that a Phoenix down  _was._

"Good  _Lord!"_ Zexion's voice was high with his horror, was calling out for assistance, positively screaming for it, while Axel's eyes, fighting to stay open, rolled and roamed across the room, seeking blue and blond but not finding.

For Roxas belonged to the world of the dead; and only to the dead.

 


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE + EPILOGUE

Snow was thick on the ground, dark and wet in some places, compacted in others, so that Axel, wheezing up the mountain, would have to kick it apart with his heel or risk slipping over the hard surface. He avoided the sucking patches, not wanting to let the ice slide into his boots, not wanting to risk the frostbitten potential more so than he already was. Three coats bulked him out ridiculously, two thick scarves, one wrapped around his neck, the other swathing his lower face, nose and mouth; two pairs of pants, one insulated with lamb's wool, the other pair cured to be as waterproof as possible, and socks, so many pairs of socks, so that his boots were wedged on over the top of them. Still, his chest was freezing; his lungs were tight, his throat pinching with the effort of keeping back the gales of coughing. He fought it every step of the way, each gasping breath harsh and raw. Every now and again a stray choke would rip itself from deep inside, threatening to morph into another fit. If he were to fall into respiratory strife, his lungs could literally collapse. He would smother on himself… but such was merely one of the repercussions that came of interfering with the natural orders of life, death, and God.

By the time he reached the tiny hut tucked sitting lopsidedly on the mountainside, the sun had begun to set, the temperature dropping further still, and an unsteady, hacking cough had started to force its way from his chest. Each inhalation thin, short, he knocked hard against the door of the wooden shack, the sound holding a frantic edge. Several moments passed, before it was opened by a red-haired girl with large blue eyes, a solemn expression on her face. "Father… thank you for coming," she greeted quietly, and stepped back to let him in. Trying to not let the effort show, he let out a few more shallow coughs, cleared his throat, the pressure building up inside. He patted the girl briefly on one shoulder, then went to the small table and begun to unburden himself of his bag and layers.

Within the hut, a fire was burning in the hearth, banked down to create a long-lasting, radiating heat that Axel sucked as deeply as he dared, fearful of exploding into a fit right in front of the girl. "Your grandmother." His voice was rasping, strained with the tamped-down choking. "How is she at the moment, Miss Kairi?"

The girl sighed, going to the fire with large padded mitts over her hands and unhooking a battered kettle from over the flames. Taking it to where two cups had already been set up, she poured black tea into each. "See for yourself, Father."

Shoulders stiff as he attempted to keep his chest immobile, the man hesitated, then went over to the other side of the single-room hut to where a few tattered blankets had been strung from the ceiling to act as a form of curtain, separating the bed from the rest of the home. Pushing aside one soft edge, Axel looked down at the cot's occupant, a tiny, withered old woman, eyes closed, expression peaceful. "She fell asleep a short while ago," the girl told him from where she was placing the teacups on the table behind him. When he turned from the invalid, the girl was twisting her hands together, a sad look in place. "…We… we've already said our good-byes. She wanted me to leave… once you arrived, Father."

"Ah." The priest – still a priest, despite all – inclined his head in understanding, then coughed sharply, three times successively, making the woman's granddaughter blink. Such a wracking noise, so painful-sounding – it was unusual from a man of the cloth, he knew. When people heard him, they wanted to know why he hadn't stayed abed, recovering from whatever illness ailed him, to which he could give no real answer. _"Excuse me,"_ Axel gasped, and turned to his bag, fingers fumbling to undo the straps and pull away the leather, digging into one of the pockets, fishing out a small, blue bottle. He tore off the wax seal, uncorked it, and without wasting a second emptied the contents into his mouth, swallowing hurriedly before launching into a scraping series of loud coughs that made the girl flinch.

 _Damn!_ He was trying to preserve his supply, to little success. He felt the potion taking effect almost as soon as it coated the length of his throat, a warmth radiating down his sternum and branching out, his breaths becoming gradually easier. Relief was swift to follow, all the pent-up suffering melting away into a faint whisper of itself. Finally, Axel was able to draw a deep, comfortable breath.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Kairi had stared, wide-eyed, until he was able to collect himself, straighten his spine, and smile at her for the first time since entering the cabin. At the back of his mind, he told himself,  _Two left._ Vexen needed to concoct a new batch of the Cure potions. They were useful for minor afflictions, generally, but for something like Axel's condition, they provided only temporary relief. Father Vexen had scolded him often enough for consistently putting himself in danger, moving around when he should have been bed-ridden or at least restricting his activities severely, but… that was nothing that Axel could promise.

Nothing had changed, at all. Not in the three months it had been since he'd met Roxas, nothing except the fact that he was no longer what Brother Zexion could have, with a straight face, ever called 'vigorous' again. Poisons were wont to do that to a body, however briefly they might have invaded a system.

Now, clearing his throat somewhat self-consciously, Axel apologised, "Forgive me. I have some breathing troubles at the moment. The cold weather makes it worse, but I'm fine now, child. You were saying, about your grandmother?"

Uncertainly, the girl hesitated, then, taking his lead, bowed her head in agreement. "Yes, she… she doesn't want me here, Father, for her – final moments. We have already… spoken our last words to one another." Her large eyes glittered suddenly with tears that Axel didn't think he could handle.

"Ah, are we having tea?" He pretended not to see, moving to pick up one of the cups as the girl sniffled and wiped at her eyes. She shook her head, then nodded.

"Grandma asked me to make some for you both. When she wakes, and feels like it."

Axel glanced over again at the bed, wondering to himself just how likely that would be, the old creature waking at this point. Her skin had looked as dry as paper, thin, as if the slightest breeze might graze it open. But, obviously the woman, even close to death, cared enough for her grandchild to supply whatever comfort she could. Thus, the priest nodded broadly, turning back to the girl and saying, "Oh, yes, I'll be sure to take her her cup once she awakens. I'm sure she'll appreciate what you've done for her."

In truth, he was anxious to get rid of the teary young woman. He was grateful, though, to her grandmother – it was always easier when the dying wanted to be left alone for their last breaths; it meant he didn't have to eject the family from the room himself with a litany of excuses as to  _why._ Still, despite this… he couldn't help but feel a pang for the child, who was so obviously upset by her looming loss. He gave a short sigh, pitying her. "Do you have somewhere to go, Miss Kairi? You can't just go and sit out in the snow."

She gave a watery smile, still wiping slowly at her eyes. "I have my half-sister's home, Father. It is where I live. Naminé wanted to be here, but didn't want to… interfere. I kept telling her she wouldn't be… grandma loves her, too… but…" She shrugged, looking remarkably young and vulnerable despite her sixteen or so years. "I will be heading over there, it's only a short walk away. And my stepfather… he will be over later."

Later… for when the old woman was among the dead, when her body was merely a body, ready for disposal. The words flitted through Axel's mind, and his sympathy grew. Patting her gently on the head, he said, "Then go and join the rest of your family, child. I will take care of your grandmother from here. She will feel no pain."

By the time the girl had dressed herself in adequate outer layers and ready to go, she was softly weeping. With one last look over at the cordoned-off bed, she left the hut, letting in a gasp of cold air, the sound of her whimpers trailing after her. Axel waited for several minutes, watching her through the window until she disappeared over a snowy rise in the rapidly falling night. The temperature plummeted with the sun, bringing a frigid chill snapping over the earth, kept at bay by the tamped-down fire, its heat flowing through the hut.

Along with the fireplace, a scatter of candles had been set up, already lit by the conscientious youth in anticipation of his vigil. The old woman in question was doing precisely what he himself had defied, and riding out the natural count of her days, with this one being her last. They had sent a messenger for him, one of the village boys, grateful to have a priest so close by to actually be able to sit by their loved one, rather than having her die, and only able to have the funeral itself presided over by one of the clergy.

It had been two months now that he had been living away from the monastery; the moment he was deemed healthy enough to be able to make the trip, he'd gathered his things and moved away to the most far-flung township he could think of off the top of his head: the birthplace of the vomiting infant. It had grown a little bit cute in his absence, but not enough to endear him to it, he'd discovered. His interest still remained with those leaving the world; the only change laying in the fact that the dying were no longer his focus so much as the dead themselves. He knew now what lay beyond the veil, he did not need to hold his breath and wonder and peer into thin air praying to see a flitting shape. That burn had left his mind, had left him peaceful. He had a different focus now.

Pulling up a chair, and his cup of tea, Axel went to sit beside the old woman, still slumbering quietly, or perhaps simply unconscious. There was a difference, he had discovered over the years. Pushing the curtain aside on its slender rope so that the light of the candles, the glow of the fire, could flood past, the redhead blew on the hot liquid, gingerly sipped, and directed his eyes longingly over to where a winged shape sat clearly silhouetted on the bed against wooden wall. On a sigh, Axel whispered, _"Roxas,"_ steam from the tea exhaling from his breath into the air.

The angel was tied to him, trapped against his body, had become his shadow. He could not leave, and that was nothing that Axel had ever hoped for. He had done precisely as he had told Zexion he wouldn't: he had captured the reaper, and caged him like a bird. The angel could not communicate, could only follow the priest's steps, a short, slender, feathered darkness. His hair, its hue only remembered in this black state, curled softly to the right. Occasionally, Roxas would flick his head as if to dislodge a stray strand from one eye, and the spikes would all sway en masse. He would shift and adjust the position of his wings, and when sitting as he was now, would draw his knees up to his chest, the swooping shadow of his scythe forever jutting into the air.

Axel had apologised, and apologised, but he didn't think the reaper could hear him. Wherever Roxas was now, wherever Axel had bound him by grabbing him in that penultimate moment of his soul snapping back to its body, he could move neither forwards nor back, he was disconnected from all. He had been sewn to the priest's existence, and no matter how many deaths Axel oversaw, he neither escaped nor was rescued by others of his kind.

Axel didn't know what to do. Roxas' state grieved him, terribly; he had never intended for this to happen, not to  _his_ reaper,  _his_ angel.

And yet… oh, the wonder he felt, when he would spend hours of a night doing nothing but staring at the walls, watching Roxas with his head occasionally bowed as if weary, wishing that the angel would never leave his side. He wanted Roxas to be free; he wanted to clutch to him, and relished these days and weeks and months where all he had to do was see his shadow in order to see his angel. The very reason he had moved away from the monastery and into the cold, windy little priest's quarters in the middle of nowhere, citing terrible illness and a need to convalesce, was to protect them both. Protect himself from the reactions of those that would notice his new, deformed Other; protect Roxas from whatever they might conceive to rid him from this plane. He just… he didn't know what else to do. He was in hiding, emerging only to accept the confessions of the near-deceased, and see anxiously if the reaper could not catch hold of that soul's coattails and be released.

To date, it had not worked.

On this sinking night, it did not work again.

At his side, the old woman eventually drew her last, and departed. Axel, his bright green, unknowingly yearning gaze never wavering from the figure of the reaper, didn't dare even to blink; but in the end, Roxas remained.

He contained his joy behind his shame, and gathered his things to return home. The young girl's stepfather came after the fire had begun to burn low, and transported the priest back down to the town on the back of his cart, heavy Clydesdale horse snorting steam as it trudged through the blankets of ice. Quietly thanking one another for each other's service, they parted at the church gate. His bag bouncing against one leg as he walked, Axel hobbled into the holy grounds, checking half-heartedly that the church doors remained locked, before retiring to his tiny quarters. Undressing in the dark, he climbed instantly into bed, desperate to be warm, anxious to allow his lungs respite after the difficult day they'd endured. He didn't want to die yet. He didn't want to stop being able to breathe. There was still too much to do.

The night passed restlessly. At some point during his slumber, Axel developed a fever, directly resulting from his foray through the snow. When he awoke, his head felt thick, a dryness adhering his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Sitting up, blinking and scowling, he rubbed a clumsy hand through his hair and glanced automatically towards the faint outline of his shadow, Roxas pale in the sunlight, barely visible. He let out a sigh, accompanied by some weak, wheezy coughing, and climbed out of bed, clearing his throat roughly.

Able to hear the rattle in each breath, he shuffled to the small fireplace studded into the wall of the sitting room, set up a fresh lattice of fine wood and got some flames burning. For a while, he remained cross-legged in front of the hearth, inhaling the heat and gradually feeding larger pieces in. Then, feeling suddenly unhealthy, uncomfortably hot just at the moment when the fire really got going, he pushed feebly away from the hearth and retreated back to the untouched chill of the bedroom to dress for the coming day. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. Taking deep breaths, choking through them as was the usual practice these days, he pressed a clammy hand to his forehead, frowning unhappily. Illness was as dangerous for his current health as was tramping through snow. He really couldn't afford to be sick, at least until Father Vexen sent a new collection of bottles down from the monastery.

With a grimace, he returned to the bench and stove that qualified as the kitchen in the small abode, carrying a collection of burning kindling from the fireplace to coax life into the cooker, and set the ancient teapot over it to boil. At that very moment, a visitor knocked upon the front door, Axel glancing over his shoulder in mild surprise. The townsfolk generally knew not to disturb him without good cause; he had gained a reputation as being unwell, and was most of the time left in peace… unless, of course, another death was forthcoming. He was also rather well-known for his ability to travel through most any weather to be by the side of the failing, although no one quite knew what to make of this habit. They had opted, out of respect, to believe it was kindness that prompted such an impulse, and in turn responded by giving him the wide berth he so obviously desired. For someone to be knocking at this hour, there had to have either been a terrible accident, or a sudden attack of illness.

For a brief second, Axel considered not answering. He was still utterly drained of energy from yesterday's activities, and the heat in his brow, crawling under his flesh, appeared to be settling in for a stay he could ill afford. With a few deep, irrepressible coughs, though, he announced his presence to the visitor outside. He certainly couldn't pretend to not be home, now. And besides… as he wearily headed for the door, vestments swishing at his ankles, he supposed that if there truly was a death about to occur, he owed it to his reaper to be there.

With a harsh breath, he opened the door, a thin smile fixed in place, only to freeze as his gaze fell upon he who waited on the other side. Green eyes which had been narrow to start with had leapt wide, eyebrows high, a strange counterpoint to the smile which remained locked in position. His entire face transformed into a grimace of shock, in direct contrast to the cool, calm expression that steadily met him.

Zexion said, "I hear you've been up to your old tricks again. When I arrived yesterday afternoon, they told me you'd left to oversee a death." He was dressed in a thick coat against the cold, its hood down around his shoulders, a roughly knitted scarf barely visible beneath it. He looked about the same as ever, hair shifting in the slight breeze that blew through the town. "I had imagined," he continued blandly, "that it had all been poisoned out of you. Moving all the way out here, away from the monastery and the core of your duties... Shall I say, 'more fool me' again, Father?"

"It…" Axel's mouth worked wordlessly for a moment. "I…"

Zexion tucked his hands placidly into his pockets. "How about you invite me in, Axel?" Silently, the redhead regarded him a moment longer, then drew back from the doorway, allowing him entry. Zexion brushed past, looking strange and out of place outside of the monastery and his library.

It had been three months since they had last faced one another. The last thing Axel remembered of Zexion was his voice, before he had fallen unconscious that night so long ago. The last words they had actively exchanged had been angry. And now, here the monk was, wearing the same inscrutable face as ever and inviting himself in.

"Ah, are you making tea? I'll have some. It's cold around these parts, more so even than back at the monastery." He began, as Axel clicked the door shut again, stripping himself of gloves and coat, unwinding the thick scarf from around his neck, revealing his slight frame in its regular brown habit of the Brotherhood.

To his comment, all that Axel could manage was a faint, "Mm," of agreement, followed by an abrasive, chest-deep cough. The redhead barely noticed its presence, as he crossed in a stunned sort of manner to check on the teapot, but Zexion glanced at him sharply. He said nothing, but observed everything, taking in the room, Axel's slow, hobbling gait, the faint flush of his cheeks. Disapproval began to drag his features into a frown. He draped his outerwear over the back of one of the old chairs and seated himself near to the fire, gaze continuing to wander.

As Axel readied the cups, still without having uttered a single actual word, Zexion sighed and began making aimless conversation. "I arrived yesterday, as I said. Demyx has accompanied me, but I left him to sleep. He is like a bear; it's incredible how much he sleeps. We've been graciously accepted into the home of the head townsman, since there appears to be a lack of inn here. It really is a very small place, hardly more than a built-up village." When the redhead remained silent, Zexion gave a small noise of impatience. "Do you really still hover over deathbeds, Father? If such is the case, then I shall regret my purpose for coming here."

Axel jolted slightly, green eyes flickering only briefly over to where the man sat neatly with crossed legs and a determined expression. Voice coarser and more hesitant than it had been the last time they had exchanged words, the redhead licked his lips, then said, "It's not what you're thinking. This isn't… about reapers anymore, Brother. I swear to you." He paused a beat, then asked, "What  _is_ your purpose for being here?"

"I decided to check on you," the monk tartly replied, "since you're so inclined to idiocy and self-destruction." He relented after this, adding, "And I also had something to deliver to you." He twisted a little, reaching into his overcoat and digging around through the pockets, before withdrawing a slim, rectangular package wrapped in cloth. As Axel came over with tea and curiosity, he peered down uncomprehendingly at the shape, frowning as he handed Zexion his cup and took the item in return.

As soon as his fingers closed around it, Axel recognised it. He stilled, startled and confused, gaze darting up in bewilderment to the other man's watchful visible eye. "Take it," Zexion said quietly. Silence fell through the priest's quarters, broken only by the clink of Axel's saucer against the small table as he abandoned his drink, hands clasping the object tightly enough to show white across his knuckles. He felt as if he'd been punched; there was no breath inside his body.

He paced away from the sitting man, shaking hands tugging and yanking the cloth free, letting it slide to the floor as the green leather cover revealed itself, eyes going wide before falling shut, squeezing tightly. With a coarse cough, he leaned suddenly against the bookshelf, gripping it with one hand while the other clutched the reaper book close against his chest. For long moments, the crackle of fire eating wood filled the space between them. Axel's breaths were uneven, head bowed. Zexion held his cup and saucer, not drinking, looking on with a sad air.

At last, raggedly, the redhead managed to demand,  _"Why?"_

The monk's faint smile was lacking in all humour. "Because you were willing to die in the pursuit of knowledge. It was wrong, what you did was an affront to God, but I cannot blame you for so desperately wanting to find out a truth. You acted like a scholar. An extremist," he amended, eliciting a short barking cough which could have been a laugh, equally humourless, from the priest, "but every discipline has its members who will go… entirely too far." He ended the sentence on a sigh, and once again, the fire filled the silence. Minutes ticked past before Axel was able to move away from the shelf, his attention riveted on the slender volume in his hands.

"I don't…" He took a breath, muttered, "I don't know what to say." He turned to Zexion, lips twitching into a bemused smile. "Even after all this time, I still remember every word of it. But, to hold it in my hands like this…" He shook his head abruptly. "I always wondered, during the – long nights, if there was something that I had missed. Some… vital piece of information, just a  _sentence_ that would help… I was convinced that the answer lay in here, somewhere." His fingertips traced the aged lines on the cover, flipped the book open, slipping through page after page, eyes darting over the text with familiarity. "But now that I have it again, I know that I was wrong… I knew everything, I didn't even…  _need_  this…" He broke off, lifting a hand to press his wrist against his mouth, panting from the most speech he had uttered in roughly three months. His chest began to rise and fell in short, sharp motions, before the coughing resumed with new intensity, a wave of them wrung from his body, exhausting him. By the time they passed, he was crouched on the floor, tasting blood at the back of his throat, muscles aching with exertion.

Zexion had not shifted from his chair, watched on with something akin to dispassion as his onetime-colleague gasped and laboured. Ever focused, he waited until the clamour had died away, once Axel seemed capable of paying attention, before asking mildly, "Are you saying you don't want it? It's no longer of any use to you?"

Axel's whole body jerked, the book coming up again to be held hard against his front, harsh words spitting out, "I didn't say that!" He returned to his limp state almost instantly, as if the outburst had cost him precious reserve.

"You don't look well, Father," the monk softly observed. "Aside from the explainable."

"I just have a slight fever," the redhead croaked, pushing sweaty hanks of hair away from his hot face. "It will pass on its own." Pressing a hand hard against one thigh, he managed to push himself, with a groaning rasp, back upright. While he allowed the man to collect himself once more, Zexion began elegantly consuming his tea.

Eventually, Axel sank into the other chair in the room, holding the book and staring at it blankly. "So, in the end, it is mine anyway. All I had to do was cripple myself, Zexion?" As the monk glanced away, he shook his head, adding, "Never mind. No. I wouldn't change it, any of it. I got what I wanted. It's just that…" He hesitated, waited for Zexion to look at him again. "Brother… you are a learned man. You might never have shared my passion for reapers, but you always knew in which direction to point me. You always knew the right books, and even, without realising, the right words to say to me…" A shadow passed through Zexion's expression, ignored by the redhead. "Please, then, you have to help me." Axel's voice had lowered to a murmur, almost a whisper. "I need your counsel, Brother, as I never needed it before. Previously, I only ever came to you for my own purposes, but… now it is another who needs your expertise." He closed his eyes briefly, flashed them back open, flipped over the front cover of the book and held it out to the scholar. "Here. Please, take it, read it. Read what the angels have written on the subject of reapers, and tell me what you think."

Frowning, Zexion slowly held out his hand to accept it, saying, "It doesn't matter what I think of this, Axel. If you need my help, you need only ask, I'm sure. I don't see how reading this will make any difference." Nevertheless, he lifted his chin, held the book out in front of him, and silently read through the words that had so ensnared Axel and turned him down the path of madness. His face changed from sceptical to plainly unimpressed. " _Sacred hearts… fading and forgotten… damned, without remorse… empty souls…_ Well. I told you my opinion already, once."

"'Incredible'," Axel remembered neutrally.

"Requiring the credulous, yes." The monk's tone was so similar to what it had been the first time Axel had tried to convince him of the text's purity that it was like being flung disorientatingly through time. He lowered the book, asking, "So, how does my reading this help you in any way, Father? You'll need to explain things to me a little more clearly, if you require my aid."

The redhead was cautious. "Zexion… I want to know how to – free a reaper. From his bonds."

The other man stared for a long, flat minute. Voice heavy, he said, "I had thought you beyond this. How can you possibly…" He trailed off, words fading, disbelief and disappointment strong. "You're still completely out of your mind," he managed, after a pause, a thread of ice lacing his tone. He shut his eyes tightly, shook his head, fingers hardening around the book in his lap. "After everything I went through because of you… When  _will_ I stop being such a soft-hearted  _fool?"_ His gaze blazed as he directed it once again at the priest, the most visibly angered than Axel had ever seen him, including the time he had nearly struck the man. Harshly, Zexion told him, "I never did tell the Superior the truth of what happened to you. Did you ever stop to consider the extreme discrepancy in your continuing being allowed to practice as a clergyman,  _Father?_ You killed yourself, you defied God, but, damn it all, I blamed myself. I convinced Vexen with everything at my disposal, including a valuable book of mine I hadn't wanted to part ownership with, to keep silent on the matter. He and I were the only ones who could know what you did, but I told him that, since your aim was never to actually commit the mortal sin of despair, we had to think  _carefully_ before we destroyed your prospects, and in the end, he agreed,  _agreed_ to let it lie. And for what?!"

He stood abruptly, teeth bared in his mounting fury, flinging the reaper book across the room, where it slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor with a new rip in the spine. When Axel jerked involuntarily towards it, looking suddenly paler, Zexion barked, "That's right, go running after it! Go and throw yourself on top of your precious book! Don't worry, I won't take it away, Axel, I'd feel dreadful if you killed yourself  _again."_  His disgust was palpable, as was his pain as Axel returned wide green eyes back to his face. He continued savagely, "You nearly died, you risked your  _soul_ chasing reapers, and it was I who pushed you to it. I who imagined that the best way to deal with you was to try to force your mind still. This was my penance, Axel, for  _you._  For the loss you have suffered, I would gladly give books, hide blame, even lie to protect you, because none of it can measure up to the initial sin that I am responsible for."

He finally stopped talking. His breaths, in the silence, were short and fast, the man upset but dry-eyed. His guilt was a terrible thing. Axel could almost see the way it had slowly burned away at him during the intermittent months, eating his self-possession, his quiet superiority, his sense of right and wrong. Yes, he had wondered why he had not been immediately thrust out of the Order; yes, he had noticed, and escaped before minds could be changed, when no one accused him of wicked, treacherous acts against God and nature. He hadn't been able to relax fully for three months, had been waiting for the proverbial guillotine blade to come crashing down and end this unnaturally elongated existence he continued to lead as a man of God in name alone. Zexion had been protecting him all along, and he hadn't known, hadn't realised the impact that that night had had upon someone he had viewed as being unshakeable.

The monk's eyes were closed again, his fingers up and touching the bridge of his nose in a composing, fortifying gesture, the loss of control unscheduled, unplanned, and unwanted. His breaths were being steadied, deepened, and it was only a matter of time before Axel would be watching his back retreat down the overgrown path from the priest's quarters to the church, and then the road, never to return.

But Zexion remained his only hope for Roxas. Delivered so fatefully, surely this was a chance provided by God.

With this in mind, Axel sucked in a slow breath, eyes narrowing on the Brother, and said, "…Zexion. I have suffered no loss. I have only gained." As the man went still, he leaned forward and added in low tones, "The reapers… they are real."

Zexion let out a sigh, wiping a hand over his face in abject hopelessness. Axel watched the fight drain out of him as surely as if there were a funnel from which it was being diverted from his body and out onto the ground to puddle at his feet. He muttered, almost too quietly to be heard, "Axel, you are a delusional madman and I'll tolerate you no longer."

"Don't leave," the redhead commanded, standing with another of his commonplace deep coughs. "Mad I may be, I'll not deny it – it takes it to do what I have done, no doubt you'd agree – but what I am  _not_ is delusional, and I can prove it to you." As the man sent him a look of blatant, wary, sickened distrust, Axel hardened his resolve, repeated with no hint of fervour, no zeal, no twisted inspiration lighting his depths, "I can prove it." For a long moment, they gazed at one another. When Zexion did not automatically begin collecting his things, Axel was the first to move, going to the small window indented into the wall and with a loud rattle drawing across the thick curtain.

Apparently deciding that some measure of protest should be forthcoming as the voice of reason, Zexion wearily attempted, "Axel, stop. I have no interest in –"

"You will," the redhead avowed, determined, and, grabbing up a bucket containing soapy dishwater yet to be cast out from two nights previously, he carried it to the fireplace and flung the icy liquid onto the flames. With a violent hiss and belching of steam and smoke, the fire was extinguished, startling the monk, leaving the two of them in darkness pierced only by a persistent glow of natural light sneaking around the edges of the curtain.

"Axel, what in the  _hell_  do you suppose you're doing?"

Obviously, Zexion had been very severely put off-balance. A man ever accustomed to knowing the ways of the world, his use of a curse denoted great uncertainty in the face of the priest's unpredictable behaviour. "In just a minute, you'll see," Axel promised, the other man having no way of knowing the multiple layers existing within the statement. With growing nervousness, Axel fumbled in the kitchen for matches and candles, carrying them into the sitting room and depositing them on the small table still housing his untouched tea. With a breath, fingers trembling, he set three candles up in the centre of the table, struck a match, and quickly, flame shaking, lit their charred wicks. The orange lights flared, gleamed against the pale planes of his thin face, green eyes rising to find Zexion watching him with a puzzled, tired frown.

"Axel, I'm not sure I –"

"Wait." The order came as a whisper, certain, the strongest the priest had sounded the entire visit. It was followed by a hoarse series of chokes that he shielded behind one hand, not wanting to disturb the candles. Dragging his chair close, the flames steadying and burning high, Axel situated himself as close against the wall as he could, and let the light flood past, brighter than usual against the otherwise gloomy interior of what was a naturally dark room to begin with.

The shadows of the two men grew longer, bolder, Zexion shifting restlessly on his feet. Axel said, "You might want to sit down for this," and, making sure that the monk was watching him, shifted slightly to open a path between himself and the wall. His shadow did not move with him; it remained attached to his body, but autonomously refused to change its position as he had. Zexion, whose gaze at first had followed the redhead, flicked back to the wall with perplexity, sensing something amiss but not yet able to pinpoint its source.

Then Roxas, as he occasionally was wont to do, stretched his wings. In the stark lighting, suddenly every feather's edge was visible, every short curl of his spikes. The set of his shoulders, the swoop of his scythe resting beside him – all was discernible, caught inside a swathing black cage. Axel heard Zexion's breaths literally stop within his chest, a catching sound emitting from his throat. He saw the man's body sway faintly forward, before rocking sharply back, an involuntary step taking him further away, but in no way able to diminish the shape that remained silhouetted against the cold stone.

With only the few candles flickering, Roxas' form was clearer than it would have been with the soft diffusion of light the fire threw out, and certainly more so than when the daylight had been resolutely smudging him out of existence. Zexion had no way of escaping the truth. The reaper stood before him in all his still reality, unmoving but by no means frozen; the occasional shift here, the slight motion there, all proving that he lived, even if on a plane that was untouchable from the world of mortals. Of Axel's own mimicking shadow, there was no sign.

Zexion took Axel's advice, and sat as if in a dream. That he managed to find his chair without taking his gaze away from the reaper seemed a feat to the vaguely amused, overwhelmingly relieved redhead. For a moment, he had been afraid that for some reason Roxas would remain invisible to the scholar; but Zexion's reaction was the most satisfying thing he had witnessed in a long, long while. Almost even more so than proving to himself that reapers existed; for here, there was no possibility of delusion or madness. When a man such as Zexion had his denials withered away, Axel knew that he had won; the truth existed.

He had to wipe his eyes as they burned and tingled, throat moving as he swallowed with sudden thickness. He had no idea where they were coming from, these tears, but he saw that they were echoed by Zexion. Two grown men sitting in the gloom with wet faces; whatever was the world coming to?

After a few deep breaths, and the volley of coughing that this brought, causing the monk to flinch at the roughness of it in the silence, Axel quietly said, "He is caught against me, Brother. He cannot escape, and I don't know how to free him."

"Axel…" Zexion spoke the name helplessly, head shaking faintly from side to side, before lapsing once more into silence, barely seeming to notice that his companion had spoken. Long minutes passed, in which the redhead allowed him to adjust to a suddenly canted world view, everything the monk had ever thought he'd known to be fictitious suddenly coming under scrutiny.

When he judged that perhaps Zexion would be capable of listening, he told him, "His name is Roxas. He is the brother of the reaper Sora, but I don't know if that connection is relative or actual; perhaps all reapers are considered brothers. He came to me, when I had… taken the poison, and attempted to take me onwards."

Slowly, the monk's visible eye swivelled to look at him, caught somewhere between dazed and stricken. "…You truly are a scholar, aren't you?" His voice was hoarse, distant. When Axel said nothing, he elaborated, "You – you sensed truth, and pursued it, no matter the cost. And you…" A hand came up to cover his mouth, gaze returning to the shadow on the wall. "This is not a trick," he murmured, almost a question but mostly a statement, a realisation.

"I'm no scholar," Axel sighed. "I am barely a priest, Zexion. I am merely a man whose mind was whipped up into enough of a frenzy to do something foolhardy, and be lucky enough for it to have meant something. But, Zexion…" He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped tightly together, engaging the man's attention again, though it came over reluctantly. "Do you see what's wrong with this situation? I found a reaper. I  _spoke_ with him, in the brief thralls of death, before the Phoenix revived me." Zexion looked positively faint, Axel growing grim. "But something went wrong, and now he cannot leave me. I took hold of his wrist at the exact moment that my soul was returned to my body, and since then he has been – like  _this."_ He gestured weakly to the wall, an expression of impotence and anguish in place. "He can't leave me. He is stuck like this, as my shadow, and I don't know how to let him go. I need you to help me; tell me what to do, and I will do it, but I have exhausted what few options I had."

Zexion's eyes flared in flustered astonishment, a small choking sound coming from within him. It took him a little while to manage, "What! You actually – you expect me to – you think I know  _anything_ about this sort of thing? Be reasonable, man. Please." He stared over at Roxas with more expressions than his face had room for, all of them fighting for dominance at the same time. "You can't… you can't ask for my help with this, Axel. I am just… a researcher, I've never paid attention to the reaper myths…" He trailed off, the thought occurring obviously that he could no longer consider the reapers as mythological, whether he wanted to or not. An agitated hand swept through his hair, holding his fringe to one side against his scalp so that he might focus more fully on the creature. Brows knitting and rising, he drew a deep, shuddering breath and let it out. "Good God in Heaven." He shook his head again. "What have you done, Axel? What have you  _done?"_

"I don't know," the redhead miserably replied. "But believe me, I don't want it to continue, that's why I need your help. He shouldn't be like this, I am aware that this is more an affront to God than  _anything_ I've done in my lifetime, but no matter how many deaths I oversee or prayers I utter, my angel cannot leave my side."

" _Your_ angel?" Zexion was quick to notice the use of possession, tone sharp and more like himself. For a brief moment, he was able to forget the miracle he was witnessing and instead sternly berated,  _"Father_ Axel, this reaper angel is in the service of God, just as you yourself once believed yourself to be; don't  _even_ try to cross this very last line into pure insanity and consider this creature to be your own, to have  _any –"_

"Roxas."

Zexion tripped over his words, said, "Pardon?"

Axel averted his gaze, a frown in place. "He is not a 'creature', his name is Roxas. He… he looks like a boy, Zexion. Perhaps around the age of Demyx. And –" He swallowed, lifted his chin, his eyes, faced the monk squarely and went on, voice shaking with power, "He is so beautiful, Zexion. To see him thus, you have no idea how he looks… And his voice, it's nothing like you'd imagine. Not anything from an angel, at least. He sounds like a person, like you or I, and… He is – he's just…"

"…You speak of him," the monk said flatly, "with a 'reverence bordering on impropriety'."

Axel blinked, stiffened, thought back to the prophet Riku and was quiet, before finally uttering, "I know how he feels now." He looked over at Roxas. "It is impossible to encounter a reaper and not…  _feel."_ He exhaled slowly. "I will grant you one thing, Brother, one thing in your favour, and that is that I don't believe the beginning of your book anymore."  _Your_ book. After all this time, he so very ironically no longer wanted it. "It is a lie. It says such cruel things about the reapers, all that about being wicked, and about the angels themselves, those who are not reapers, being somehow  _better_ than the reapers…" A scowl darkened his face, and turning to the monk he argued, "Tell me, what can be more important or  _merciful_ than a reaper? If it is the reapers that take souls to Heaven, then what use do the other angels even  _have?_ What do they do with themselves, while their contemporaries are down here among the humans sending one soul after another up to God's grace?! It's all  _lies!"_

Anger springing suddenly out of nowhere, Axel leapt to his feet, stalked to where Zexion had thrown the book and snatched it up. In one swift motion, he completed the job that the impact against the wall had started, and tore the cover clean off. Pages followed, scattered to the ground, Zexion leaping up in horror and crying,  _"Stop_ that, you silly fool, don't be stupid! That is a  _book!"_

"This," Axel declared hotly, shaking it at the monk, "truly  _is_ fiction, Brother." He threw the remains into the fireplace. Though the flames were gone, the water began to dampen the pages instantly, and the next time they were dry enough, he would set the whole thing ablaze. "I don't need to hear what God's precious angels think of reapers, I already  _know_ what Roxas is like, and that's all that matters!" He spun from the fireplace, coughing, and through his respiratory distress shouted, "I have watched him for three months, and never have I had to wonder if those words are true! What wickedness exists in Roxas?  _None!_ What compassion does he lack?  _None!_ He reassured me, Zexion, he told me not to fear! He held out his  _hand_ to me, and gently told me to take it and be received into God's care. And perhaps, maybe, maybe he  _has_ been damned to walk the earth, but the only reason the living would ever have need to fear is because they fear  _death –_ there is nothing about a reaper that is frightening, nothing at  _all._ And – and as for…" He closed his eyes, gripped the mantle and doubled over with spasms from his chest, gasping and wheezing and glaring fiercely all the while at the monk on the other side of the room. The second he had breath again, tasting the dangerous tang of blood on his lips, Axel continued, "As for the two worlds of reapers and priests never twining as one – take a look at  _my reaper_ and tell me that it is so! Perhaps we are not  _meant_ to twine, but twine we  _have,_ Zexion. If that is untrue from that damnable book, then so too is everything it claims. And love! Good God,  _love!_ 'Love will never come to those who have sinned'!"

"Are you telling me that, too, is a lie, Axel?" Zexion demanded shrewdly.

"Of course it's a lie!" the redhead bawled back furiously. "Because if God knows but  _one thing_ about me in this instant, it is that –!" He stopped with all the abruptness of a crash, and the silence in the wake of his rage was deafening. It was filled after only a short pause, however, by the persistence of his harsh, lung-deep hacking, and this time, it did not subside. Too much yelling, too much agitation, and with a fever still on his brow; it was a lucky thing that Zexion and Vexen were together on the scandal, otherwise the monk might not have known about the dwindling supply of potions. Axel was brought back from the brink of unconsciousness – he couldn't inhale, couldn't _breathe –_ by the cool slither of liquid down his throat, the familiar healing tingle of a Cure.

Sweating, nauseous, dizzy, the world slowly came back into focus with Axel in Zexion's arms, down on the floor, like a parody of that night so long ago, a realisation which escaped neither of them. Zexion sighed down at him. "Look what has become of you, you ridiculous man. To think that you were once so promising." He looked to where the reaper was now, no longer on the far wall; it had shifted to follow Axel across the room, stood nearby with an air that seemed eerily dispassionate due to lack of visible expression. As he directed his gaze back down to the redhead, he noticed Axel's eyes fixed on the hand not holding his head off the hard floor, the monk holding up the small, empty vial and telling him, "Vexen sent the latest series along with me. It seems that God walks with you no matter what, Father. Or perhaps angels stepping on one's heels brings luck."

Axel closed his eyes briefly, drew a deep, rattling breath, coughed once to rid his throat of prevailing mucus and the threading of blood, and slowly eased himself up from Zexion's grip. The monk sat back on his heels, and somehow between them the air was clear again, more than it had been in a very long time, as if all the bad feeling had been burnt away and the pair of them returned to level ground. Zexion's awe had been shaken from him, and now he was able to view the divine shadow that clung to the priest with a cooler mind, though his shock at its existence remained hovering beneath the surface of his skin. This visit was beginning to feel more and more surreal.

"So." Axel spoke quietly, sounding exhausted, holding himself up on thin arms, head down and eyes hidden by hair. "Will you help me? Help Roxas?"

Zexion carefully corked the empty potion bottle, saying nothing for a long while. Axel did not press him for an answer; he could see that the monk was thinking. He knew the consequences of disturbing Zexion mid-thought. His lips quirked at the edges in memory of times that were very definitely over and gone. They seemed to be equals, these days, the scholar and the mad priest.

"…In the book," Zexion began, at last, but Axel interrupted, "Forget the book. I should never have brought it into this, it will cloud your thoughts with its – its blatant falsities."

"Nevertheless," the scholar calmly persisted, refusing to be put off course, "despite your distaste for it now, it surely has truths buried deep. It says erroneous things, in your opinion, about reapers – but what about what creates a reaper, Axel? You say you desire a way to free this reaper of yours from the bonds you somehow unwittingly created for it – pardon me, him – so then, we must ask ourselves, how does one free a reaper? Not from a situation like this; we have nothing to go by, not even Riku's writings involve this sort of situation." He turned to look once again at Axel's new shadow, the redhead joining him, though in his eyes was not mere frustration but also flickers of unsettling desire; Zexion noticed them with a frown, but was long beyond pointing anything untoward out. Besides which, his mind had found hooks and threads to follow, he didn't want to be diverted by yet another pointless argument. "No, the two of us, Father, are very much on our own from here. I do wish," he briefly exhaled, "that you hadn't destroyed that book. But I suppose it was yours to do with what you will…"

"What are you getting at? What's your point? Do you have one?" Axel was tired, and impatient. He felt unhealthy, and his chest was sore even with the Cure having momentarily settled things. The taste of blood would not leave his tongue.

"…What causes a reaper?"

The way Zexion said it, it was more like he was musing than posing a serious question. Axel mused along with him, but quickly came back with the answer of, "Sin. It is the act of some form of sin or another, whether in life or as an angel, more probably, that destines a reaper to his fate." He hesitated. "But that is what the book told me. I have never come across an explanation  _for_ reapers, prior to that, and it can't be trusted as being truth, can it? It has lied already, so many times."

"We must disregard that," the monk countered disapprovingly. "It's no use asking for my help if you're going to resolutely close your eyes to anything you happen to dislike. If reapers are damned angels, then it stands to reason that yes, they have sinned. And I would place a reasonable amount of trust in that judgement, if only because of the dark places in which several of the known encounters have taken place, the most well-chronicled of course being Riku's in the bowels of darkness. Do you disagree, Axel?"

Axel lifted his head, glared at him. "Are you suggesting that Roxas is something wicked, after all? Damn it all, Zexion, I'd stake my life that –"

"You've done that already, you silly twit, and don't curse in front of me." Zexion eyed him witheringly. "I never said anything of the like. A man is not wicked simply for having sinned, and I'll not cast down such judgements even on angels; in fact, I would say that simply by being an angel, one is as far from wickedness as can be, providing they do not Fall. To be reapers, they still are in God's service, Axel. This equals sin without evil." Axel grumbled a little, but made no further outbursts. When he was sure that the redhead had been suitably mollified, Zexion continued, "What I am  _suggesting_ is that your reaper has sinned. I am suggesting that once upon a time, it stands to reason that he was a – a  _regular_  angel, but that by some misdemeanour or another he found himself cast down the hierarchy to his… to his current position, do you see what I am saying?"

"Roxas was demoted?" Axel could not have packed more disbelief and scepticism into his tone if he had tried, and Zexion did not appreciate it.

"Since we must operate on a simplistic level that you would understand, then yes, consider it that if you will."

Axel grimaced, ran his fingers slowly through his sweat-damp hair, feeling the hot touch of his skin through the strands. "So Roxas sinned, and became a reaper as a form of penance."

"No."

"…No?" The priest was confused.

"Not penance," Zexion corrected, raising a finger, "but  _punishment._ Punishment and penance are two different things; penance is the forfeit one makes when one has wronged, in order to atone, whereas punishment,  _penalty,_ is what is  _imposed_ upon the wrongdoer to teach him a lesson. Your Roxas has not atoned, he has simply been serving a sentence."

"Provided that any of this is even viable," Axel contributed, unhelpfully and without hope.

"You asked for my help," the monk snapped, "and this is what you're getting: my educated opinion based on assumptions drawn from the available resources. Goodness knows we haven't any  _concrete_ evidence to back any of these ideas up, because it either doesn't exist, or is sitting dirty and damp in your fireplace! Are you going to listen to what I'm saying, or are you going to argue at every given opportunity? You have a reaper caught as a  _shadow,_ Axel. Do you really want to free him, or would you rather have this continue as it is? Perhaps your conscience and your desires haven't agreed on the matter."

It was a sharply aimed blow, one which silenced the redhead numbly. Looking stung, Axel glanced away, brow furrowing, and made no further comment. After a moment, he gestured with one finger for Zexion to go on. "We shall assume," the man resumed, with a warning remaining in his voice, "that the reaper has sinned, and is suffering as a result. Thus, we must consider: what is the duty of a priest to a sinner? One doesn't merely sin and have that be the end of it; he sins, he despairs, he confesses and  _then_ he atones. But, of course, your angel cannot confess in his current state, whether he wants to or not. Despite this, we must find a way  _to absolve your reaper."_ When Axel's gaze snapped up, incredulity strong on his features, Zexion merely shrugged. "If he is forgiven by God, perhaps he will be freed. That is the best I can come up with."

A long minute passed, during which the redhead's mouth moved several times, wordlessly, before finally creaking out, "How on earth do I absolve an  _angel?"_

Zexion raised his brows as well as his shoulders this time. "You personally do not; it is God who forgives. As a priest, you are His mouthpiece. If you are attempting to absolve one who cannot confess nor repent, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control… Well. I imagine you must act for both parties. You must forgive, on behalf of God, and you must atone on behalf of the reaper. You must pray, as he would have to pray, that God will be merciful. Maybe then, he will be released, and you can  _both_ be free."

Axel's eyes narrowed, the complexity of the situation forcing its way through his mind from as many angles as he could manage, attempting to find a seed of proper understanding out of it all. "Do you honestly believe that – God would  _allow_ that sort of thing? It is He who has condemned them, is it not? Would He then turn around simply at the word of a priest and – and change His mind?" Doubtfully, Axel said, "That sounds more like the work of man, Brother. God is not the sort to make an incorrect decision."

Zexion couldn't help but softly laugh at the childish nature of such a statement, and with the smile lingering on his lips replied, "If God was not lenient and did not understand the nature of sin, then he would not have given priests the power to forgive in the first place. It is not about God making mistakes, it is about sinners making amends."

Gradually, as Axel thought this over, his expression darkened, became withdrawn. "…Brother." His voice was quiet, and dull. "Do you think, though, that God still considers me a priest? What I did was not committed out of despair, but I nevertheless chose to take my own life. It was not a permanent arrangement, but anything could have gone wrong, and I'd have been dead at my own hand. You may not have turned me in to the Superior, but that doesn't mean that God does not know; and if He knows, then surely He would have, in his own mind, cast me away?"

Zexion was silent for a while. The two of them sat on the floor, with the candles burning lower and their shadows sharing space along the walls, lost in thought. Eventually, the monk ventured, "It is called the 'sin of despair', taking one's own life. The emphasis is not on the death itself, but on the loss of faith in God, and the giving in to sorrow, darkness. You… arranged to meet a reaper the only way you knew how. I do not see the despair in that." He spoke gradually, testing each word out, feeling ways around the technicalities. Axel could not help giving him a ghost of a smile.

"If you were God," he said wearily, "I'd have no need to worry."

"Don't be blasphemous."

Axel's forehead creased slowly. "But we don't even know what he did. Suppose for a moment I try your idea of absolution: what sin warrants a loss of rank within angels? Exactly how many prayers am I going to have to recite on Roxas' behalf, when we don't even know the severity of the sin?" Another silence. "Perhaps," the redhead eventually sighed, "I should aim for the worst and hope that somewhere between one Hail Mary and thirty decades of them, he will suddenly disappear from my shadow?"

Zexion stared. "Thirty decades of Hail Marys?"

"He's an angel who might have sinned," Axel responded, frustrated, with a cough. "Who knows what kind of penitence that will require? What you're proposing I do is attempt to actually…  _upgrade_ his position within the  _Heavenly hierarchy._ I feel like thirty decades of Hail Marys would be getting off lightly, to be perfectly honest. And that is always assuming that my mumbling prayers on Roxas' behalf will even doanything in his favour." He shook his head faintly, resigned. "But I suppose that in the end, it's the only idea we have right now."

The monk sent over a sympathetic look, pushed down on his knees and levered himself to his feet, brushing off the rough brown fabric of his habit. "My advice would be, don't get too ahead of yourself, Father. Don't think about the 'Heavenly hierarchy'; this has nothing to do with anything except forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key. Be the vessel through which God can forgive the reaper, and good things will come. I'm sure of it."

Axel gazed up at him blankly, thinking it through, before helplessness returned to take root. "…I don't…"

"Do you want to free it, or not?" Zexion was blunt this time, his compassion stretching only so far; a scholar in need, he could identify with, but one with an untried potential answer was another scenario entirely. Still, as he looked down at the red-haired man still sitting, bewildered, on the floor, seeming as though he were lost in an ocean of vague theories, the slightest thorn of responsibility remained lodged in Zexion's conscience. He grimaced, running his hands shortly through his hair, considered for a long moment, and then announced abruptly, "I will stay here again, Axel. One more night in this town. Tonight, while the people sleep, you must perform the absolution in trying to free this reaper. If it doesn't work… then you will return with me, and in the library at the monastery we will continue to search for answers. How does that please you?"

In all honesty, Axel felt the strong need to say 'not at all' – he was skittish around the monastery now, afraid of consequences, of truth, awkward in being faced with the enormity of his lies. However, he had to admit that part of that had been his strong misgivings regarding having to, yet again, confront Zexion, and also Vexen. And, if it would help Roxas…?

He turned his eyes to the wall, the reaper crouched nearby, only vaguely mimicking the solid body that he unwittingly haunted. A long, slow breath released from Axel's lungs, accompanied by a dry catching in his throat, a muffled choke. His chest continued to ache. "…All right." His voice was soft, drained. "If that is what it takes, then – with your blessings, if I fail, I will return."

Zexion nodded briefly, began pulling on his gloves, collecting his bag, drawing his overcoat on. Glancing every now and then at the shadowy wall, he said, "Fine. In that case, rest up today. Get over that fever, take care of your lungs, have the potions on hand for if and when things get dire. I have little interest in touring this small place – no library to speak of – so I'll be in the town leader's home if you have need of me. If you have need of Demyx at all, well, look for the local children, no doubt. He was expressing a desire to play when we arrived yesterday and found them kicking a ball in the street. He's still too young to take things seriously." As he shrugged on the strap of his bag, the monk smiled slightly, adding, "But then, in light of recent events, I don't consider that an entirely dislikeable trait, do you, Father?"

Axel thought of Demyx, and gave a tiny, half-hearted laugh. "I must admit, I am sick of the world being taken so seriously. A little of that lightness would be quite, quite desirable."

Ready to leave now, Zexion inhaled deeply, let the breath out, and studied the redhead with a gentle eye. "Perhaps," he said, "when this is over, you can take some lessons from him." When Axel glanced up, one eyebrow raised, the monk smiled ironically. "It wouldn't kill you, that's for certain." Another small snuff of a laugh from Axel, and Zexion took his leave, showing himself out of the small quarters with only one last, lingering look at the wraith in the shadows. "Good luck, Axel," he parted earnestly. "I count myself richer for having seen your reaper, but I pray that I never need lay eyes upon him again."

"…Until death," Axel murmured, to which the monk inclined his head peaceably.

"Indeed."

As he opened and then closed the door, the gust of cold air that it allowed puffed the candles out, plunging the room into darkness. Axel was left alone with his shadow, his hot brow, his thoughts, and that lingering flavour of blood.

\--

\--

That evening, snow began to fall. Axel smelled it coming, felt the temperature drop as if the planet was settling for a deep freeze. By the time he was stepping out the door of the cramped priest's quarters, into night made blacker by winter's blanketing of the skies, tiny, wet flakes were quietly filling the air, a slow, thick cloud sighing to the earth. He lifted his eyes to the faintly illuminated fall, the lights of the town shining dimly nearby, filtering through the trees that surrounded the church lot. He inhaled, choked on the cold bite of the temperature, and bowed his head as several low coughs shook his frame. Folding his arms tightly over his sore chest, throat feeling raw from a day of fever and breathing difficulties, the red-haired clergyman, though he scarcely considered himself seriously by the title anymore, sank lower into his heavy, rough woollen coat, fighting back a wave of shivers.

One of the townsmen or their children had been along earlier in the day and salted the walkways between his little dwelling and the church, but in the intermittent hours the ice had managed to reform to a degree, making the way to the large, empty building a cautious affair. It was, fortunately, only a short distance, following the one winding garden path, Axel reaching the side-door of the old building and unlocking it with gloved hands, expelling bursts of steam into the frigid air as he sporadically coughed through the tightness in his chest. His breaths, as he sucked them in and pushed them out, sounded thin, strained; clearing his throat loudly and forcefully had developed throughout the day into a habit, whenever it felt like he couldn't quite inhale deeply enough. The presence of the fever within him along with the previous evening's snowy hike had aggravated things to the point where he had had to consume three more of Vexen's potions already, despite their still-limited number. However, if, as he resignedly believed he would, he ended up returning to the monastery in the morning, he could always convene personally with the other priest and organise for something more effective in situations such as this, when a mere Cure wouldn't suffice. He didn't look forward to what Vexen might have to say to him, though.

The church building, as Axel pushed his way inside, was dry, but thoroughly frozen. The air was cruel in its intensity, sinking sharp hooks into every square inch of the man's exposed face and stabbing into the softness of his thick clothing. It hurt to breathe. The slab-stone walls provided no insulation whatsoever, seemed to leech the world of not only heat but colour as well. Darkness swathed the wooden pews, the pulpit from which sermons were delivered when the opportunity arose, though not, so far, by he himself.

The small stone basin from which he had taken water to baptise the screaming baby those months ago sat quietly against one wall, an unnerving, silent reminder of that time of his life. He had spent little time within the church itself since he'd arrived to live at the priest's quarters; it seemed as if a phantom memory of a younger Axel clung to the air, disturbing the old man he had become in the meantime. The internal fire had burned out, blown gently away by cool angel breaths, and from the ashes a wiser, quieter man had risen who disliked being reminded of the past. Perhaps he did not regret what he had done, did not regret by any means the discovery of Roxas, but that long-ago night still haunted him, and would continue to do so for many years to come. One did not just… forget one's own death, no matter the reward at the end of it. If nothing else, the pain of it would never leave his mind, nor his body – he had half-destroyed his flesh gaining spiritual insight, and not a day went by where he was not reminded of this. The rapidity with which he went through Vexen's potions was testament enough.

Getting accustomed to the temperature was not something Axel would be able to do standing in place and gazing about at his surroundings – he needed to keep moving, needed to get warm blood flooding his veins and loosening his lungs before the constricting quality of the cold choked him. Holding his gloved hands over his mouth and nose, he cured the immediate worry by gasping in and out into the wool, so that after some minutes the air he inhaled was warmer, if somewhat stifling. His throat, which had begun to tense, relaxed little by little, and feeling easier, he wandered the building, setting up a collection of dormant candles on the altar at the front of the room, near the pulpit. His boots sending out an echo in the broad space, he took his time, not wanting to rush, not wanting to agitate his body. Keeping one hand over his mouth, continuing to breathe through woollen fingers, he lit first one short votive candle, then used that one to light the others. After some minutes, four rows of quiet flames burned, wax occasionally hissing as it liquefied and met with fire.

With a slow breath, carefully lowering his glove and braving the naked air, Axel gazed down at the altar meditatively, uncertainty flickering within, meeting with doubt, hopelessness. He could not see how this would work; but in the end, there was nothing to be gained by simply not trying. He could not return to his room and climb into bed without knowing for sure that he had failed; to leave any stone unturned would be a worse offence to Roxas than anything he had managed thus far.

With the flames throwing the angel into sharp relief against his stark surroundings, Axel shifted his gaze down to where Roxas patiently waited, stretched across the floor and robbed of dignity, featureless, isolated. His expression softened as the reaper moved slightly, a faint motion of the head. Outside, the snow fell thicker, the wind rattling the glass panes of the windows. "…I am sorry." Axel's voice was lonely in the large room. His eyes lingered on the dark shape, a deep sigh working its way from inside of him, slowly steaming out into the crisp air. He'd already said it before, and so much else. Roxas never reacted.

Tiredly, the redhead went over to the pulpit, climbed up behind it before the rows of empty pews, ran his hands over the heavy, gild-edged, ever-present Bible and opened it, hardly feeling through his gloves. Page after thin, delicate page, he flicked through the solid book, wondering, briefly, why it couldn't have been enough. He had found a calling in life, and he had meant it so very deeply at the time; but in the end, it had merely served as a door to something it hurt to admit was greater. Yes; this was greater to Axel than God. Roxas, even as a shadow, meant more – and that unlawful redesignation of devotion was a cause for shame for all involved.

However, as his eyes again found Roxas, he couldn't bring himself to wish that it had been different. Even had it been better for all involved if he'd been content with being a priest whose mind remained with God in every thought… he could not help but be selfish at heart, and know that this version of events was something he would never relinquish.

Even having held onto Roxas like this… the lie that he told himself and others was that it was lamentable, when his heart desperately begged with him to just – leave – things…  _be._

With a breath and a piercing cough, his hands upon the Bible and his gaze upon the reaper, lit dimly by the candles, Axel instead began his recitation of prayers. He called upon Hail Marys, Our Fathers, intoned them with feeling and held Roxas in his mind, every word he uttered a plea to God to wipe the slate clean and just  _forgive._ Absolve the reaper of whatever sin he'd committed, using Axel as His medium, and bring it all to an end.

It wasn't long, however, before the meaning behind his prayers began to change, before they became a call to God to make things  _right_ again. Gradually, the passion in his voice shifted, morphing from respectful urgings to entreaties, to raw pain. This was the first time in months that he found himself face to face with God, communing with Him directly, and without warning every overwhelming moment of that long period of time welled up and came spilling out. Something started to give way inside of him, with his shadow watching on. His mouth and lips and teeth and breath created these words that he knew from heart, but all the while, inside he was calling,  _End it! If you're going to take him from me, take him now, and spare me the fear of losing him._

He was breaking down, bit by bit. To be uttering all these prayers, over and over, to be pleading with God on behalf of someone who had done no wrong when he himself was the greatest sinner… He dropped all pretence in believing that it would work, and at some unknown point it stopped even being about Roxas anymore. It became all about Axel. It became about him apologising, it became his unshed tears given voice and his desperation and anxieties and horrible, ripping guilt finally admitted to; it became his anger, accusations levelled at the Almighty, followed swiftly by a frantic supplication to understand the choices he had faced, and made.

This had been a foolish idea, and would never work, but here a priest in name alone stood with his hand on the Bible and his voice soaring up towards God, and he had to use this opportunity to speak. He recited his prayers, over and over,  _over and over,_ and throughout the jumble of words his mind was a feverish frenzy of thoughts and emotions sent Heavenward, with a demand, a  _demand_ that they be heard.

In the end, he lost the battle, and in the feeble manner of every man and woman before him who had found themselves with nowhere left to turn, found himself screaming, ** _Why?_**

It was, in essence, a confused child's cry for help.

His final lie, the last he ever uttered, was to pretend that it was God who had forsaken him, when his conscience quietly already knew that he had forsaken God first; and that, even then, God was listening for his return.

He spoke until there was no breath left; until the metallic tang of the blood in his lungs overwhelmed all else. For a while, he eventually stopped speaking, and the next time anyone did, it was Roxas.

"Take my hand," the reaper softly ordered.

Axel had his head in his hands, fingers scrunched tightly over his eyes, one leg bent under the hard wooden bench of the front pew, the other stretched out in front. The sound of the other's voice brought a stillness to him, followed by a wash of dizzy bewilderment. His face jumped back slightly from his hands, eyes studying the creases of his palms with wary puzzlement; he could not remember having sat himself here, nor taking hold of himself like this, this vulnerable, desperate body language. Chin jerking up, the reality of Roxas speaking suddenly piercing him, the red-haired priest stared with widening eyes at the black-swathed, winged apparition looking just as he ever had the first time they had met. A long minute extended between them, silent but for the faint rustle of feathers from time to time. Then, before he could stop himself, Axel's mouth split into a wide smile, a disbelieving laugh erupting from his throat. "It – worked?"

Clear blue eyes bore into him, porcelain features solemn but gentle. With both hands wrapped around the dark shaft of his scythe, Roxas corrected, "No." There was a momentary pause of incomprehension, to which the blond explained, "You haven't freed me, Axel. You've joined me."

Axel… stared. Gazing up at the boy, who looked back so steadily, so calmly, he felt dreadful, hideous uncertainty taking place within his mind. He tried to fight it; didn't want to face it; and when the angel unhooked his left hand from his weapon and began intoning, "Lamb of God, your time has come. Take this my hand –" he leapt up and bellowed over the top of him,  _"NO!"_

Roxas stopped very abruptly, and blinked at him, startled.

Breathing hard, trying with difficulty to not think about the fact that breath was unnecessary at all right now, he barked, "No! Stop that, don't say those words!" When the angel continued to stare, he added sharply, "You're wrong, Roxas. I'm not dead; you're just free. I forgave you on behalf of God, that's why you've appeared here before me. You're confused." Never mind that it had ceased being Roxas' absolution partway through, never mind that Axel felt curiously freer now than he had been since the last time he'd found himself standing before this shadow of death itself,  _never mind any of it –_ he was right, damn it. He couldn't be wrong.

Roxas looked briefly lost for words, slowly folding his hand back onto the scythe and studying the redhead with a curious expression. "…You know," he said, at length, into the space between them, "you are the only person to do this to me. How, and why, do you consistently say such strange things?" Shaking his head faintly, a familiar gesture to Axel after three months of watching it happen, he went on, "None of the other souls are this unpredictable. I expect questions, and demands, and threats; I expect for people to tell me that I am mistaken about their deaths. I even expect them to try and escape me, an act which I will not attempt to counter, as mankind has always acted of its own free will, for better or worse… but you are the first and only mortal to have tricked me, and then anchored me to his flesh, and then the moment we are both freed telling me that he has  _forgiven_ me on behalf of God…" He resumed his staring for a moment. "…I don't know what to make of you," he eventually concluded.

Anxiously, Axel waved his hands swiftly through the air between them, then snatched them back as Roxas reached for one. "No, no, you're wrong," he insisted, eyeing the boy's hand like some sort of poisonous serpent. "Because, you see, I really did forgive you, Roxas –  _God_ forgives you, using me, a priest, as his intermediary, and now you don't have to be a reaper anymore. Don't you understand? It was Zexion's idea; he suggested that in order to free you from… from being my shadow, I should try and…"

Roxas was shaking his head, slowly and deliberately. His gaze locked grimly on Axel's, he said, sounding remarkably, almost frighteningly like Zexion, "You appear to have developed misconceptions, lamb of –"

" _Didn't I tell you not to call me that?"_ Genuine anger glinted out of the priest, giving the angel pause.

After a moment's consideration, Roxas submitted to his wish, amended, "I am a Reaper, Axel. God has little to do with that. God is what lies at the other end of this journey of yours; I will continue down here, among your kind, as I always have done. I was born a Reaper, and I'll not die until there is nothing within me that God has need of. He is our Master; he truly is our God; and we serve him impeccably." With just the merest tinge of sadness, he said, "There are no tricks this time. I watched from your shadow. You are dead, and there will be no recovery from that." He smiled faintly, the corners of his lips lifting almost imperceptibly. "But I can't say I didn't enjoy my time of being less than nobody. Thank you for that. I felt, for a while, not alone."

Again, a plea this time, Axel said,  _"No…_ I swear to you, you are free now," to which the angel responded with a long, level look.

"I know what my existence is," Roxas replied coldly, evidently losing patience. "If you do not, then you will once you have gone to be Judged, and discover all the Truths that ever were. You will know the true nature of me then, and stop trying to change what cannot be changed." A strange look of frustration appeared on his features, out of place with the calm he usually displayed almost flawlessly. "Do not deny me who I am, and do not deny yourself who you are – thus, with this advice in mind, lamb of God, won't you finally take my hand?"

The glare he received appeared to mildly surprise him; his golden eyebrows lifted slightly, the angle of his hand faltering. "Show me my body," Axel challenged, to which Roxas blinked faintly, then turned and looked over at the pulpit. Chest tightening, but with a curious lack of coughing – something that rarely happened during discussions these days, he noted with distinct uneasiness – Axel leaned to the side and peered around the reaper's black-swathed body.

There, having shimmered into existence with the acknowledgement that it was there, lay Axel's empty corpse. It was behind the podium, and this time, there was no Zexion on the scene to hold him up from the blood that shone in a wide, uneven puddle around his head and shoulder. A slow sense of numbness crept through his limbs, but now he was sure it was entirely mental; he wasn't truly feeling anything, was he?

"…I don't remember," he said hoarsely, struggling with the brief spike of shock, but recognising with sinking stomach that he had perhaps realised from the moment he'd found himself on the pew. It was just that… he hadn't wanted to… he didn't want to admit to it. "All I remember is… speaking to God."

"You were coughing all throughout," the blond told him softly. When Axel met his gaze, eyebrows knitted together, he went on, "And now, you are dead. And as I told you last time – the time that you tricked me," a slight edge of hardness entered the blond's tone, though it lasted only briefly, "– the longer that we stay by the body, the greater the chance that darker beings than I will find you. You cannot stay here in the mortal world, Axel, it is a sad and lonely existence, I have seen it happen before, miserable souls consigned to wandering when they could be with God."

Momentarily lost, the priest helplessly asked, "Would you come with me? Are you – still my shadow?"

Roxas glanced away, replying, "No. That was an anomaly that occurred because you returned so abruptly to your flesh while holding on to me; I could not leave you, I was anchored as your soul was anchored."

Axel stood in place for a minute, thinking things over, Roxas patiently waiting for the eventual conclusions to take place. He was again surprised, however, by the short, hard shake of the man's head. "No," Axel muttered. Lifting his chin, facing the angel squarely, hands bunched into fists by his sides, he announced, "The whole reason that any of this happened,  _all_ of it, is because I wanted to encounter a reaper, Roxas. And I found  _you."_ Glaring, he demanded, "Do you honestly expect me now, after all I've sacrificed to meet you and finally free you from my shadow, to give you up? The instant that you're no longer trapped, you try to abandon me?"

He crossed a line. Roxas scowled, slammed the wooden tip of the scythe's shaft onto the ground with a crack and began firmly, "Now, you see here, don't you dare to presume –"

"You were my shadow, Roxas," Axel cut in angrily. "You were with me, always, and I was happy. Is it really so impossible for you to accept me as  _your_ shadow? That is all that I want: to be with you, to trace your steps!"

Roxas rocked back, stunned, then snapped, "You have no  _idea_ what you're talking about! Don't be so foolish, such things can't be done!"

"Riku did it!" Axel shouted back. "He did it, and spent his entire lifetime communing with your brother! I read about it, he wrote books all about Sora!"

"Riku was alive," Roxas replied, obviously becoming bewildered by the argument. "And on top of that, he was an idiot; he dabbled in things that no human ought to, and you would follow in his footsteps? Angels belong to angels, and humans belong to humans, and all belong to God; why try to blur those lines?"

" _Why?!"_ Axel seemed to choke on the word, seemed to swell with a combination of rage upon other emotions, seemed to hover briefly between explosion and complete capitulation – then grabbed the wide-eyed angel by the sides of the face, ignoring his hiccupping inhalation of shock, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Time froze. Neither of them moved, not the first his lips nor the second to fight; the press of their mouths together like this obliterated all thought or instinct. They simply, for a moment, existed, joined together by spirit.

Dimly, Axel was aware of the crash of the scythe falling to the floor, but still Roxas didn't twitch from his grasp.

When he opened his eyes, the world was hazier, he was sure; as though touching some part of Roxas opened pinpricks of other worlds, unknown universes the living were not privy to. But then, perhaps it was just… because he was touching Roxas, and never mind whatever threads of the angel touched against other realities. Just the fact that he was holding the blond between his hands, and that Roxas' eyes were half-lidded, a dazed, small quality to him all of a sudden.

Pale throat bobbing as he swallowed, Roxas finally began to compose himself, tried to carefully pull away, but Axel would not let him go; instead touched their foreheads together, green and blue gazing into one another, tightened his grip. His fingers were in Roxas' hair; his thumbs scraped slowly along the boy's cheekbones.

"Um…" The reaper's voice was hardly above a whisper, dark lashes flickering briefly.

"This is why," Axel told him, determined, breathless, only now realising it fully for himself. "This, since the moment we met.  _Roxas. My_  reaper." When the angel made no further attempts to draw back, Axel hesitated, kissed him again, very softly, then inched away a little to inspect the boy's expression. Unable to stop himself, he reached up to touch some of the hair he had been watching for three long, contactless months, Roxas closing his eyes a little further.

Struggling to keep his focus, his purpose, he weakly protested, "But… God…"

"I don't need to be with God," the priest whispered, lips brushing near to his ear. "As long as I am with you."

Roxas' eyes widened, body stiffening as he muttered, "…Blasphemy…"

With a soft laugh, the man wrapped his arms around the angel, hands going beneath his wings, Roxas awkward inside them. "Yes." Pressing the side of his face into the blond hair, holding his reaper close, a seed of desperation entered him as he asked, "So please – don't turn me away…?" Eyes closing, he murmured, "Take me with you, anywhere you go. Just… not the gates of Heaven."

Roxas remained within his grasp, ill at ease, but… only because the sensation of touch was so very unfamiliar to an angel of death.

\--

\--

**_47 Years Later_ **

"It was I who found him. And again, I… who drove him to it. Please… Father…  _please, forgive me."_

In the small dormitory room, a withered old man lay upon the bed, the blankets tucked carefully in around his slight body, his bones slender and delicate with age. His head upon the pillow was heavy, the flicker of the candles throwing shadows of he and his companion across the room, both of them thoroughly human; any other sights had long since vanished from the world, along with a piece of its warmth. The chill left behind had been felt by the elderly scholar for so, so many years now. Zexion closed his eyes, feeling a sting, and when he opened them again, found that they were damp.

Wrinkled features creasing into a scowl, he reached up with one shaking hand and pressed his fingers to the inner corners of his eyes, banishing the moisture with a quick swipe, muttering, "What a thing, what a thing to do at this age. I am no child."

Beside the bed, holding his other hand tightly, his blond colleague smiled sadly. "C'mon, Brother, you know we're all children of God. It stands to reason we get to act like it sometimes, right?"

The old monk shook his head slowly, painfully, exasperation managing to work its way into his features even despite his difficulty in breathing, the slight dizziness that gripped the world. "Demyx, you will always be a child of God no matter how old you get."

The younger man laughed lightly, replying, "That makes two of us, then." Gradually, watching the scholar sink back into his pillow looking as frail and fragile as if a stray breath would separate him and sweep him away, the blond priest's expression sobered. His grip tightened carefully around Zexion's narrow hand, a twitch of pain flitting across the monk's face, unrelated to Demyx's gentle grip. When he closed his eyes again, Demyx knew he was trying to keep from crying. "Zexion…" His voice was soft, compassionate. "You knew Father Axel better than anyone around here – you've spent so long blaming yourself for his death, but don't you recognise that it was his own actions that led to the events of his life? You're such an intelligent man, even now, surely you understand this much?"

Sharply muttering, Zexion demanded, eyes remaining closed, "What do you mean,  _'even now'?_ Age brings wisdom, Father, and don't you forget it."

Demyx snuffed a little laugh, casting an affectionate look down at the Brother. "You are deflecting my words, Zexion. Don't think I didn't see what you did there. I'm not a kid anymore, I won't start stammering apologies and scuttle away. Even an old man like you should remember  _that_ much."

When the wizened monk finally opened his eyes and shot over a narrow look, the priest winked. With a sigh, Zexion said, "Demyx – only you could hear my confession of inciting a priest to sin and blasphemy of the highest order and still be so cheerful."

Abandoning his Bible on his lap, the blond wrapped a second hand around Zexion's, and just as he did every time the priest showed him any sympathy, Zexion promptly again winced and looked away, the understanding almost more than he could stand. "Zexion, you have such a burden on your heart, I can see this. But it never reached your soul; there is no sin to forgive, and God knows this. I could forgive you on behalf of God, but we both know, and He knows, that it would just be said for your peace of mind." He smiled down at the monk. "Are you really that desperate for peace of mind, Brother?"

For a long minute the old man didn't respond. His gaze was on the wall, where his shadow lay beside him as it always had done; waiting for him. He stared, until Demyx hesitated, squeezed his hand cautiously and ventured, "Zexion…?"

"…Yes." When he turned back to the blond, Zexion's eyes were once again wet. Voice hoarse, he repeated,  _"Yes,_ I am so desperate for peace of mind. Please, Father, grant it to me, as your last act as my dear friend of nearly fifty years."

There was a pause, before Demyx inclined his head, returned his left hand to his Bible while keeping the grip of his right firm around Zexion. "Anything for you. You know that."

His voice came steadily as he began intoning prayers for the dying monk, but as Zexion watched him, he saw the small, already-lonely tears running down the priest's face as he prepared to see his friend off into God's arms. Despite himself, Zexion smiled faintly, a swell of fondness rising slowly within him, and he felt gratitude that during his last moments he could be granted such a peaceful emotion.

As Demyx reached the end of his litany, he raised his eyes from his Bible to see a terrible stillness drift slowly over the monk, a new paleness gripping his sallow flesh. He bit the inside of his mouth, holding back the earnest weeping that would have to wait until later, and nearly squeezed his eyes shut against the stab of loss – but stopped as he saw Zexion's expression suddenly change. So close to death, halfway between the end of one existence and the beginning of another, a smile lit upon the old man's lips, brows lifting as if in surprise. Even as the glassiness crossed his eyes and made them blind, Zexion murmured, "Ah… There…?"

A second later, he was gone, the priest left with his cooling shell, everything that had made him Zexion vanished into the night. Demyx gazed at the familiar face, now forever in repose, never again to scowl at him, reprimand, or smile faintly in approval. No more conversation would come from his lips, no more educating or sighing. His hair would not be brushed aside, his eyes would not read, he would no longer consume tea and spend long afternoons pondering old truths and new. Especially, he would never again gain that faraway look that spoke of hard-edged memories and pointed regrets. Demyx would never know these things from him again. But still… even so… in that one moment, he could not bring himself to feel the sorrow which would come later, when this memory began to fade.

Rather, he turned his eyes up into the air, squeezing Zexion's hand on last time, and murmured, "Guide him well, Father. And your reaper as well."

With that, the priest closed his Bible, and waited for his tears to return.

 


End file.
